Fuzzy Thinking

Meterlogical Influences on Bovine Orientation

2012-01-12T17:49:00.002Z

I was listening to the Radio 4 prog called Material World and they had a judging panel discussing which proposal to select the winner of a science project competition.

One of the proposals was to do with the orientation of cows and if they have the ability to predict rain or as the entrant David Prior put "Meterlogical influences on Bovine Orientation". I remembered and also one of the scientists did mention that there had been previous research had used Google Satellite images.

Sadly they didn't select as they weren't happy with how you would make the experiment

Now if there was a way of getting realtime satellite images so you could extend what the previous researchers did as was detailed here maybe it would be possible to do the experiment after all.

If you want to listen to the particular episode of Material World then head here and look for the episode published on the 29 December 2011

Saltire 200k

2011-12-05T13:32:00.001Z

Mapmyride Saltire 200k Audax
Audax UK have a variety awards for doing various daft things from riding a Fixed gear bike for all your Audax rides and even an award for seeking out as many Altitude points as possible and for the real masochists doing the same on a fixed gear bike. The award I've decided to go for is the Round the Year Audaxing award for which I need to ride an Audax every month.

So for Novemeber as that is when the Audax year starts I rode the Saltire 200 albeit backwards as a DIY event. While I didn't round in a very fast time nearly 14 hours in fact but I felt that was reasonable considering I've been a bit lazy since I moved to Edinburgh in August and the wind was a bit frisky the I rode it as the previous day there had been 70mph gusts and while it wasn't that bad the next day it was still blowing 20 to 30mph. As the Saltire as it's name suggests is basically a cross I spent most of the day in a crosswind with a nice tail wind to North Berwick and for the third section from Traquair to Duns. Having now ridden it the wrong way round I now understand why the official event is run the other way round as I had all the major climbing to do for the last section from Duns to Edinburgh. Has to be said even doing the proper way round is still pretty tough going hill wise plus you would have the delight of two tough sections into a proper headwind so I still prefer my way of doing it as beating your brains out against a headwind can be pretty soul destroying. Highlights of the ride were coming over the Granites road seeing the Wind Farm and views from the high point, soup in the cafe at Innerleithen, the completly clear and dark night sky coming over the moors between Duns and Edinburgh and finally highlight was managing to save my GPS unit by the judicous use of its lanyard, on the descent to Gifford I heard it beep to warn me of a turn approaching I looked down to see what it was saying and it had disappered! It had jumped out of its bracket due to dodgy road surface and was dangling from my handlebars, close call that.

For December I will be having a go at the Nippie Sweetie 200 which as it has started to snow this weekend maybe one of my slightly dafter challenges of this year or was my 540k 400k ride dafter?

We shall see.

I pity the fool!

2011-10-27T09:28:00.001+01:00

old 7 series bmw hood and grille, a photo by scleroplex on Flickr.

Behind me revving engine as I approach tight blind bend he of course overtakes, immediately slows down makes me brake so he can get over the speed bump with his shagged out suspension, then he turns right and cuts across the bows of an oncoming car to come to a complete stop, as there are two builders lorries unloading leaving a suitably big enough gap for a bicycle. I pass and shout Huzza!

NB

Car was a BMW 5 Series well past it's sell by date driven by a cock with no passengers/friends, of course.

Droochit

2011-10-19T14:40:00.001+01:00

IMAG1151, a photo by fuzzytnth3 on Flickr.

The photo says it all. This was my second attempt at trying to get a 400k done before the end of the Audax season (ie 1st November). The weather forecast didn't sound great so I went fully prepared for rain and wind but it all proved to much for my gloves and Endura jacket.

My jacket I knew wasn't doing that well due to age and use so wasn't surprised it leaked but my gloves were only bought last year and not used that much just leaked like a sieve. By the time I had done 25 miles I was pretty wet all over although my overshoes and poly bags were still doing the job for my feet. My hands were cold and so in North Berwick Public Toilets I used the warm air hand dryer to try and get some life in my hands.

I carried on to Traquair but coming over the Granites road as I approached the summit I got the full force of the madness that was Mother Nature. As I crested the summit I had to engage the middle ring to pedal down hill! A couple on mountain bikes coming the other way gave me a cheery wave as I shouted the obligatory 'Great weather for Ducks" gag.

Once I reached Innerleithen I was a very droochit thing so headed to the bike shop to buy some replacement clothing specifically gloves and another Endura jacket. In retrospect I think I should have bought even more stuff like underclothes as now I was stopping the rain getting in but I was soaking my new gear from the inside out. On leaving the shop you could see where I had been as there were large puddles of water wherever I had stood but bless the shopowner he said not to worry more important I got what I needed.

The shop owner recomeded the Traquair Hotel as being bike friendly so I stopped there to warm up and get some warm food in me. All of this cost me a lot of time as I had arrived in Innerleithen at 4:30pm but didn't actually leave till 6:15pm so by the time I was at the Traquair control I was about 15 minutes outside the time limit. I pressed on as I hoped to make up the time but whether I had used up some of my sleeping time I had planned on having back in Edinburgh I didn't want to think about as that would be to depressing.

While in the Hotel the mental weather had turned to something a bit more benign even bits of blue sky were appearing so I was hopeful I could make some reasonable progress to make up the lost time. Sadly it wasn't to be as I had to contend with flooded roads and grit and stones washed out of the fields onto the roads as well as being cautious about concealed potholes in the massive puddles that were everywhere.

to be finished once I download my GPS track to check some times etc.

Fire fire!

2011-08-10T15:11:00.002+01:00

Dreich Track - a fuzzy photo taken by a Fuzzy man
For some professional photos of the Veldrome checkout Andy Shaw's work here

Due to parental obligations ie sticking a boot up my youngest sons arse as and when needed to make him work for his final exams at secondary school. I have not been to the velodrome till last night, which turned out to be a source of concern and hassle.

Since a daft accident last year when some yoofs had taken their BMX bikes onto the track and inevitably had a crash but unluckily for one of the said yoofs he chopped his finger off. This resulted in the Meadowbank Stadium high heidyuns realising they in fact they had a velodrome at the bottom of their Car Park. This resulted in a Risk Assessment... oh dear 21st Century Health and Safety meets 20th century well 1970's velodrome design and construction on a cheap budget. Not a recipe for joy and happiness.

Now I had heard some mutterings of Fire Marshals on't t'internet and a Track League meet was cancelled due to the lack of said Fire Marshals. So last night I was uncertain if the arrangements for storing your track bike at the velodrome would have changed cause I guessed they wouldn't be happy about people storing highly flammable track bikes under the wooden track as they have been kept for the last 40 years, without incident. Sadly I was correct, no longer can I store my track bike under the velodrome and the only option currently is to store my bike in the changing room toilets, for all n' sundry to knick bits off my bike. Not ideal and as I don't have a car and taking a track bike on the bus isn't an option I'm going to have to invest in another set of wheels plus a new front fork to attach a brake to, so I can cycle to the velodrome change the wheels over to my good Campy wheels with the £80 a pair tubs (for which I will need to find a method to carry on me or the bike).

While all this is very inconvenient for myself what is much more worrying is how difficult it is for a newbie now to actually get started on the track. No longer can you just pay your £4 or so for a track session on a Friday night and have either Alistair Watson or Graeme Whylie set you up with an ESCA track bike and a wee bit of instruction on how to ride track and see if you like it. Now you have to get signed up for a couple of the official Accreditation sessions and if you miss them then as a friend of mine's son has just found out he will have to wait till next year.

Despite all of the above in April a number of new riders did complete the Accreditation process and are taking part in the Track League but I still have my worries that it is going to have a detrimental effect on numbers and if nothing is done to improve the situation then I can see the demise of Meadowbank veldrome won't be that far off.

2011 season so far...

2011-07-20T14:12:00.004+01:00

Having had an enjoyable sometimes controversial and even hilarious moments (I'm talking about you two Schlecks at the back) to watch in this years Spring Classics we then had the the Giro.

The Giro which was a good race this year but maybe not as outstanding as last years was. Contador showed what a quality rider he is and we can only assume that he is this season riding cleaner than a very clean thing or if he isn't he would be as daft as a Riccardo Ricco.

The Giro then led onto the preambles to "Le Grand Depart" with the likes of Tour of California, Tour de Suisse, Dauphine Libre. The highlight for me has to be Bradley Wiggins winning the Dauphine which made it all the more sad that he broke his collar bone (all the best cyclists do at some point ie me :) ) as he was looking like he could improve on his 2009 placing.

So the Tour it's self has been captivating right the way through from the Green Jersey competition to the GC contenders. Some hellish crashes to boot but also some exceptional skills displayed by Hushvod, Cavendish/Renshaw and Evans. Now we are into the final week its anyones guess who is going to finish with the "Yellow Jumper" (Thanks to Ned Boulting I now refer to the Maillot Jeune as the Yellow Jumper) but I will nail my colours to the mast and say I think Cadel Evans is going to do it.

2011-05-16T13:46:00.009+01:00

A friend recently pointed out to me that a photo of me riding my trike had been posted over on a blog called "Big Ring Riding" which was a very pleasant surprise particularly as in the same month I'm listed with the likes of Stephen Roche, Alf Engers,Phileppe Gilbert all of whom are heroes of mine.

For a bigger version of the original photo follow this link

To see the original Big Ring Riding post then go here Big Ring Riding can be very funny but always gives respect to the featured riders as that is the whole point of the blog.

Funnily enough in my later years of time trialling my ability to do "big ring riding" got better and better but it is all relative. My girlfriend only uses 3 of her 27 gears on her road bike most of the time and monsters it up steep hills. Fair enough as long as the hill isn't any longer than Orchard Brae in Edinburgh but anything longer and she has to admit defeat and bung it in the middle ring :) As a result of her preference for pushing big and mine for spinning we are completely incompatible on our tandem that we bought together. Our solution has been to agree not to ride together which is a shame but for the best.

My daughter Eilidh on the other hand is an excellent tandem stoker as she doesn't weigh very much but more importantly hates hills and has the ability to let her legs spin when on the flat saving her efforts for the hills. When we come to a hill its like having a motor bike engine suddenly kick in and we storm up any hill. Mechanical assistance? Meh you just need Eilidh as a stoker!

Pedals for my other obsession...

2011-04-15T16:11:00.005+01:00

Lesley Speaker effect the Boss RT20 £170 - Great for Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix sounds

For looping a Boss RC20 £200 - Due to the cost I suspect I may go the Garageband route instead or maybe the RC3 instead.

or maybe for much lower cost a Boss RC3 £165 - Yikes not much cheaper than it's big brother!

Wah wah has to be a Dunlop £90 - Only thing not sure about is that you do get a click when you activate or deactivate. May investigate some other options.

Delay and Reverse effect Boss DD7 £130

So to boil it down to what I need rather than what I would like. The RT20 at £170 plus the Dunlop Wah Wah at £90 will be what I am going to save up for. The Boss RT20 gets close to that sound Jimi has on tracks like "Little Wing" and "Angel" and Dave Gilmour has on "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" for example. Obviously the Wah Wah for Jimi songs like Voodoo Chile and Up From the Skies

Mull it Over

2011-04-12T14:02:00.007+01:00

The Mull it Over 300k ride proved to be as excellent as I hoped it would be. The weather was sunny but not to hot and for the ride it's self the prevailing wind seemed to ease off which was a great relief compared to how it had been all week when it had been gusting at 40mph. Still to get to Oban I had to contend with a consistent 15mph headwind the whole way which combined with the rough road surface from Callendar onwards made for a tough old 9 hour slog.

As the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a video that Damon Peacock put together of the days ride. In the past he has made videos of the AUK Paris Brest Paris qualifiers plus the actual PBP ride which for a nominal cost he sells to anyone who wants a copy.

Near 1 minute 43 seconds in to the video you will spot me exchange a few words with Damon as I'm climbing the first proper hill of the day. Couldn't have been that bad a hill cos I'm smiling :)

Myself Damon and a lady who I think was wearing a YACF jersey met at a tea room where I discovered how expensive things are on an island I mean £1.50 for a wee bottle of Fruit Shot jings! We rode together for a bit but Damon pulled ahead as I was happy to maintain a steady pace of 25k or so but the Fruit Shot must have had an effect as I speeded up passed Damon who then got on my wheel and it looked like we would make it in time for the ferry. On the last rise to the junction to turn for Fishnish I dropped Damon and I kept going straight on in full time trial mode missing the huge 6 foot square sign saying "Car ferry Fishnish"! Damon was to far behind to realise my mistake and was unaware that I missed the turning. I think purchasing a GPS thingy would be a good idea! As a result I missed the ferry and had to hang about in the lovely sunshine for an hour having a blether with other riders as they showed up. One thing to note the man that runs the Cafe at Fishnish is the most grumpy soor faced misery, so don't buy a coffee from him but wait to you get to the other side and buy something from the two lovely ladies working in "Jeans" Cafe. One of the riders was saying that the last time he was at Fishnish (about two years ago) the man was grumpy then to!

On Mull there were a lot of twitchers with telescopes and bins trying to spot Eagles flying over the hills. I don't if they were succcessful but we at least had the good fortune when we arrived at Lochaline to have a local point out to us that there was a sea eagle right above us getting hassled by a couple of gulls. Apparently earlier that morning there had also been otters playing in the same bay.

The ride around the Ardamuchan peninsula was beautiful particularly as the sky while a bit hazy was clear of any proper clouds. At 170k or so I stopped at the Blue Parrot cafe where all the earlier cyclists had like locusts nearly cleared the place of cake. Luckily there were still a couple of flapjacks with my name on em! As I arrived at the cafe two other riders from the earlier ferry were being caught up and joked about having to get a bend on to prevent being passed by the later ferry riders. As it was on the hellish road surface in Lockoilort I met them again and I passed them on the climb out of Lochoilort.

Next stop was Glenfinnan where Graeme Wylie's daughter was doing an excellent job of being a mobile traffic light as the hotel / control was at the bottom of a steep hill and without her jumping out in the road to signal us in it would have been very easy to fly past and miss the control. We were waited on hand and foot and plied with potato and leek soup and in my case two cans of Irn Bru. From Glenfinnan we headed along the A82. If I had been a bit earlier there was an option to take the quieter road to Corran and catch the ferry across but instead I had a lovely blast down the road in time trial mode with a tail wind pushing me along at 25 to 30 mph. My average speed actually went up by 0.4k as a result of that 30k! With the sun dropping below the horizon I then headed along the North side of Loch Leven which I suspect looks gorgeous but it was to dark for me to see at all. Hardly any traffic a nice rolling road meant it wasn't boring and I had the whole road to use to apex the corners and basically have a hoot. At Kentallen I got a bit confused as the road signs seemed to be saying go back to Fort William and as I had just come from there plus the route sheet was saying don't take the road to Oban! Evenually using my mobile phone as a compass and checking the maps I had downloaded to my phone I started to understand what was going on and followed the route sheet to arrive in Oban. I was quite chuffed with that last 100k as it took 5 hours ie 20k average speed which had me arrive a bit after 1:00am. I must stick to doing Graeme's rides as they do seem to flatter me!

On the more technical side for this ride I changed my tyres from Schwalbe Marathon Plus to Conti Four Seasons. The Conti's were lovely felt terrific when cornering particulalry when descending. The downside was that I did have a puncture where the Marathon's have done two winters of commuting and not had a puncture. Obviously the two tyres are meant for different tasks but it was a joy to be riding a tyre that gave such a great feeling particularly when cornering as the Marathons are pretty vague when pushed in corners.

2011-03-09T06:55:00.000Z

Run No	1405
Date	09/03/11
Hares	Mr Nuisance, Cuckoo and Oral Sex
Location	Edinburgh Football Club

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe

Or to put it another way...

Twas bloody cold and very windy
For poor Hashers to be running
Let alone gimbling about Calton Hill

But nonetheless that is what we did. For this run I joined theWalkie Talkies, as I had not remembered to bring my running gear alsoI couldn't be arsed running!

As one of our fellow Walkie Talkie number namely Easy Riderwas trying out her new knee brace and the first thing we had to dowas wend or should I say gimble or even gyre our way up Calton Hillbut on descending from this magnificent viewpoint and it must be saideven in the pishing rain and howling gale it was a mighty fine view,Easy Rider discovered that her new fangled contraption was notkeen on descending stairs and was creaking and squeaking in protestand I don't think Easy Rider was liking the discomfort mucheither. On asking Cuckoo for a short cut and he explainingthat the only way on was via Jacobs Ladder, Easy Rider chosethe only sensible option which was to join The Brewer, Cupriceand myself in a wee swally at the Guildford (they had just put on anew barrel of Stewart's Coconut Porter, so huzza!) where we werelater joined by Aberdeen Anguish, Mongoose, GinBin and Megasauarse.

It turns out as you will see below mentioned in the Down Downs,that even one of the Hares and some other slackers diverted into theRegent pub, very sensible behaviour I say particularly on such anight. Now for the next part of my write up I have to rely on afellow geek, Mr Arse Over Tit who with his fancy malancy GPStracking, Heart Rate Monitoring, Calorie Counting gizmo I can relaythese scintillating facts...

Altitude:~350 feet of ascent/descent

Attached:elevation profile.

Distance:3.83 miles

(so,average distance between checks is about a third of a mile)

Calories:408.

AOTaverage heart rate was 114bpm, ranging from 87 to 142.

Which means he wasn't tryingcos my max heart rate when I hared the run last week was 88 percentof max while AOT's is only about 70 percent of max or it means I am afat bastard.

There were 12 checks count em' 12! Nae Messin and ArseOver Tit were musing that they could somehow calculate the age ofthe hare by the distance between checks, but Arse Over Tit couldn'tbe arsed to come up with an algorithm. Maybe just as well as it mightbe to depressing to know the answer.

From the GPS data the run from Calton Hill got to the fourthcheck. For myself at this point I was only aware of having comeacross one check but mind we were short cutting but such are the waysof the Walkie Talkie hasher. From there it progressed to the bottomof Calton hill via Jacob's Ladder in the bowels of Calton Rd. Thenext check was a little further away at the bottom of the Pleasancewith check number eight at the top of the Plesance. From there it ziga zag ah to Queen's Drive to skirt Arthur's Bum (ooo err missus) tocheck 11 at the back of Dynamic Earth then onto check 12 inScabbyhill which was near the Regent wherein Hoggy was impressed bythe size of a member (see Down Downs). Then it was gyre and gimblefor all your worth along Royal Terrace back to the warmth andfluorescent strip lighting of the suave and sophistically appointedEdinburgh Football Club
Now as taught to me by one Snake Charmer, all my Hash Sheetwrite ups have been written with the aim of mentioning as manyHashers names as possible. As the only reason any of us read the HashSheet is to see our names in print so we can give our little egos ahug and so we might justify our existence on this the third rock fromthe sunthat is the source of all our power. The sun andyou and me and all the stars that we can see, are moving at a millionmiles a day. In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.... but I digress. So in noparticular order well other than it was the order my co-hare typedem' in, other Hashers and Harriettes who were there were Bubbles(good to see her as she hasn't made it to the hash for a while), MaryPoppins (we discussed the effects babies have on your brain andseeing by the Down Down she got and despite wee Hamish now being twoyears old Mary Poppins brain still hasn't recovered) ,Suckling Pig (was sprinting about like a mad thing on the runso much so I never managed to get a proper word with him,particularly as Mr Nick Harper is playing a gig in Edinburgh in May,that I thought he would like to go to and see), Jeez Wow (wasbeing his usual athletic self must be all those ferrets that FlyingDutchman was on about in his write up of Jeez Wow's run),Lost Patrol (as far as Icould tell he wasn't lost as I saw him in the pub later. Am I thefirst to make that joke? Shouldn't think so....), PostmanPat (was not posting or pattingas far as I could see), Captain Oates (thinkhe may also have been in the Guildford), Magaphone, BigMac, Grewesome (crikey Inever saw him well spotted Cuprice),Gin Bin (shouted some abuseat me in the Guildford but for the life of me I can't remember whatfor or about), Karma Sutra (hopeyou get that virus off your PC), Mongoose wasn'tgoosed by anyone, Hairspray (Relatedto me in the boys kahzi (as you do well it beats looking at largemembers doesn't it Hoggy?) (ooo parenthesis within parenthesise isthat allowed?(Shouldn't think so)) how, like Emuthat he too had received txt and phone messages from the truthseeking jurnos of the Evening News despite the fact Hairspraywas in darkest Africa on safari), Squatter Spotter(remarkably, when I handed atray of sarnies to him turned his nose up at them, when I thought hehad a veracious appetite for anything at all after a Hash R@n. Itwould seem he has standards, who would've thunk!),

So it was having gyre and gimbled our way back to the venuehaving sated our appetites for draught real ale we made do with aselection of bottled beers. Which at £2.50 a shot meant I had somechange left in my pocket for once. Due to a lack of a GM it seemedlike an age before a stand-in was found. Indeed Badger Tadgerwas berated for nicking sarnies before the Down Downs were startedbut then he had to make up for all the body heat he was losingthrough his ridiculously short shorts on a night like this. Cuckoowas coerced into GM duties and as there were no awards or Virgins(the Slithy Toves must have got em”) he without further ado handedover to the RA Flying Dutchman who in his inimitable stylepunished the following miscreants...
The Hares – Mr Nuisance and co hares Oral Sex andCuckoo. Mr N was up north making a cage and had to relyon co hares to lay the trail!!
Shiva - in competition to loose weight with FlyingDutchman. On asked how the last Sunday exercise regime was going– She did not make it to Yoga or swimming, made it to the gymthough – did 3 press ups and then went home, seems FlyingDutchman is going to win nae probs.
Badger Tadger – met Flying Dutchman coming backfrom a false trail. FD said “false trail”, BT “howdo you know?” FD-“I just ran it” BT “are yousure?”
Meggasauarse- realised her Garmin did not register thesecond half of the trail, Big Mac realised his did notregister the first part of the trail. So Big Mac said “let’sget together sometime and compare trails!
Bubbles (Dragon stand in) - For not following theRA's advice on speaking to the press about the emergency servicesreaction to the flour last week, despite Dragon having agreedwith the RA he was quoted assaying “Absolutely ridiculous”.
Hoggy – Short cutting own run into the Regent where thenext door table was more interesting than the fellow hashers on histable. His distraction was maybe due to the very large andresplendent cock standing erect in the middle of the table next tohim!!!
Mr Nuisance –Phoned Emu's mum as she is unwell.Was concerned that she was sounding very dozy when he phoned. It was2am in Australia at the time he phoned!
Mary Poppins – Bought a pint at the bar, came back to thetable and commented that she could not remember drinking her pint soquickly. Maybe it was because she left her pint back on the bar,dooh!
Easy rider – Due to all the rain and stairs on the runher knee ended up making very squeaky noises.
Fuzzy Wuzzy – Mentioned for all his hash names, on theEast coast of Scotland where he is known as Fuzzy Wuzzy, inBelgium and France – Mad Jack McMad and on the West coast ofScotland Flubby Wubby (for a saggy arse!!)
Cuprice –For wearing her Bahrain hash t-shirts whilebuying the flour that lead to all the excitement last week.
Flying Dutchman also punished some talkers in the circle bypouring beer on Oral Sex and an accomplice name of whomescapes me at the moment for gassing while the RA tried to make anannouncement about Oral Sex's BRAs upcoming event, sheesh!
Well done to all involved both Hares, hashers stand-in GMs andstunt RAs.
Right enough of this tosh On On!

Scribe

Fuzzy Wuzzy aka Flubby Wubby aka Mad Jack McMad

Silly Paris Brest Paris mistakes

2011-02-09T14:39:00.005Z

While chatting to a fellow rider on the Nippie Sweetie this weekend, conversation came round to PBP but in particular silly mistakes we had made as PBP virgins. So I thought for the benefit of this years PBP virgins here are the three biggest mistakes I made in the hope no one will be silly enough to repeat them...

1 Get a decent nights sleep before the ride - Bleedin obvious you would think but I failed, as I was being a tight git Aberdonian. Having cycled to St Quentin and used a bivvy bag to save on accommodation costs. Thinking before I traveled what with all the folks in France dying of heat stroke that summer (twas 2003) I would be fine at night and most likely sleeping on top of the bivvy bag not in it. What happened instead? Torrential rain all night my supposedly waterproof bivvy bag leaked like a sieve. I didn't get a wink of sleep as a result by about 4 hours into the ride I had to stop and try and get some kip and never recovered from the sleep deprivation.

2 The Penultimate Control is indeed the Penultimate Control - What the poo am I on about you may ask? Well consider in total I managed about 4 to 5 hours sleep for my 84 hour ride, my neck muscles stopped working with about 30 hours still to go and so was riding with one hand holding up head (more of which in mistake number 3) and the other hand was being used to hold me up, for steering, changing gear and braking.

So needless to say I was a bit puggelt when I arrived at the Penultimate Control. When I got off my bike at the Control a very enthusiastic small portly French gentleman grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously greeting me as if I was his long lost brother and wouldn't let go of my hand and kept telling what I can only assume was praise for my efforts and what I started to think was that I had finished my ride so profuse was his enthusiasm. Having eventually separated myself from him I arrived in what was the most amazing sight an entire gym hall laden with every kind of food imaginable, from roasted chickens to sausages to cake to fantastic patisseries and to top it all free beer. All of which further reinforced my silly notion that yes this indeed was the last Control, "huzza" methinks! I sat down with some elderly Belgium chaps who like me had spotted the free beer as well as patisseries and we all had a good old blether (well heinz French, English plus arm waving type conversation) for an hour, further reinforcing my foolish notion. Eventually having looked a little more carefully at my Brevet card the name of the control I had just got stamped was not St Quentin but was Villaines and so was the penultimate control not the last one at all, dooh Embarrassed

3 Use an artificial aid to support your head when your neck muscles fail - As mentioned above my neck muscles stopped working and even although I had brought a spare pair of bib shorts so I could wear clean ones each day it never entered my thick skull that those spare bib shorts hanging off the saddlebag drying in the sun could be used to support my head by tying them to my helmet and either sitting on the shorts or more likely more securely tying them to the saddle rails. It wasn't till I had finished and saw another rider afflicted with the same problem but obviously more brain power who had done exactly that. Oh yes a secondary mistake I made was to stop at a Pharmacy and buy a neck brace, completely useless for riding a bike!

Well I hope the above helps but more than likely knowing human ingenuity for cocking things up I'm sure you will find your own silly mistakes to make on PBP

Bon Courage!

Nippie Sweetie 200

2011-02-02T15:02:00.019Z

First post of the year very remiss of me considering it is now February.

Well my excuse is nowt much has got my blogging juices going but I thought I would mark my first Audax / Randonneé in quite a while. The last one I rode was the Dave Harris 200k organised by Sonya Crawford. It was a bit of a disaster from start to finish for me. I rode it with my son on the tandem but we were late starting and never caught up as we had a mechanical and son aka Gingerbob thought riding tandem involved eating chocolate and any other available grub from my back pockets while letting his legs spin! Give him his due, while we were doing a track stand on the final bit of Tala (due to the verticality of the climb at that point) I suggested that perhaps we should get off and push but as he wanted to be able to go back and tell the "Boss" that we had managed to climb Tala on the tandem unlike when the "Boss" and I had attempted it. So the Gingerbob insisted we keep going and so I was treated to one of the two occasions that day when he did some work!

So to the Nippie Sweetie, this promises to be a fairly moderate day out nowt to exciting in the climbing department just a nice old pootle to the Forth Brig then onto Perth turn to Stirling well actually Causwayhead and the excellent cycling friendly caf called Corrieri and finally back to Edinburgh.

The organiser Graeme Wylie has also setup a 300k in April called "Mull it Over" which I am entering as well as it sounds fun as we start in Oban catch the first ferry to Mull ride round Mull and depending how quick or slow you are get one of two ferries back to the mainland again but on the North side of Mull to then ride round by Fort William and back down to Oban. My plan is to make a long weekend of it stay in a B&B with the "Boss" and once I've had some kip do some touristy type stuff with her then cycle back to Edinburgh.

Having rejoined Audax UK last month I expect I will be getting a few more rides in and may go as far as doing a complete set ie a 400 and 600k rides just so I can get a silly badge. Sheesh what silly things motivate us to sit on a bike for hours on end.

I shall edit this post and load up some photos of the ride next week assuming I can get Flickr to play ball.

As promised but sadly as Flickr is still broken so I have embedded the photos. I only took a couple of photos at the penultimate Control. I didn't have much time to take anymore as I was trying to maintain a reasonable average speed and foolishly got in with the front group until Inverkeithing when I dropped back on the climb.

After Hill o' Beath I spotted Colin and Sonya riding the tandem just up the road I managed to chase them and get on their wheel which certainly made for a nice ride with lots of good blethering but as we went down Glenfarg as soon as their speed went over 40k I started to lose contact. I've never had this problem before so I can only assume it was down to the tyres I was riding which were 25mm Schwalbe Martathon Plus At the control in St Davids I had a bowl of soup and a roll but didn't hang about and headed off down the road. Half an hour later or so Colin and Sonya caught up with me and I joined them again. They were doing a nice pace on the climb out of Braco but again on the descents I struggled to stay with them, so was on my tod once more.

By this time it wasn't that far to Causewayhead so I plugged on had a coffee and cake and again didn't hang about and headed off doing a steady 25k average speed. A group of 5 or 6 caught me and again I tagged on the back which lifted my average speed for the same effort by 5k which was fine by me! On the way through Grangemouth there was a bit of confusion about the route but as this road is an old training ride for me I landed up on the front to guide everyone through. I kept my speed at 28 to 30k and discovered by the time I got through the refinery that there was only one rider with me the rest of the group had dissappeared. I kept pulling but maybe should have let the other guy do a bit more work cause by the time we got to the climb through Bo'ness I dropped back and got passed by the rest of the group who obviously had reappeared! You would have thought I would have learnt a thing or two about riding a bike but no! So with my speed staying at about 25k and sometimes higher when the wind was behind me I plodded on back to Edinburgh for some excellent cake and potato and leek soup!

All in all a great day out no rain, bit overcast but you can't have everything.

Harpic

2010-08-16T14:05:00.005+01:00

DSC03331 a photo by fuzzytnth3 on Flickr.

As ever a gig in Glasgow is the place to hear live music. Nick Harper played the Griffin pub which is a lovely wee venue for Nick as it's almost like he is playing your Living Room. There was excellent banter as usual at a Glasgow gig and what I wasn't expecting was a support act who managed to squeeze into the tiny space that was fine for Nick but tres cramped for a four piece band!

The support act were fronted by Jake Cogan and the band were called Liberty Roses. While I thought they were fine my daughter wasn't so keen on the singer but did like the girl on violin. I was impressed by both the guitar players but then I always am cos everyone plays better than me :-)

We had heard that Nick had the previous night had problems with the electrics possibly specifically his Mac which he uses to apply various sound effects both for his vocals and the guitar. Before he started his set he was tinkering quite a bit but eventually got started and after a few songs we all started to notice crackling sounds coming over the PA after a couple of attempts to sort it plus some gags from Nick about how he had wanted this to happen, he eventually went to Plan B and dumped the Mac and played the rest of the evening without any effects and playing it old school much to our delight as Nick played a lot of old stuff that he hasn't played the last couple of gigs as he has been playing a lot of stuff from the latest album (which is excellent go buy it if you haven't got it already)

If you like you can listen to the two encore songs he did here. Just bare in mind it's not a Sage II audience but an audience from the centre of Glasgow!

Health and Safety gone mad?

2010-07-06T13:44:00.005+01:00

It’s ridic what happened yesterday on Stage 2 of Le Tour or Cancellara/Saxobank pulled off a neat trick to persuade the whole peloton to get the Schlecks back on and not loose time on the GC.

Robbie Hunter was quoted after the Stage “no Grand Tour has any business in these northern countries and fuck anybody who says different. See how much you guys like hitting the deck at 60kph.” Well Robbie you are a big Jessie, what does he think the same roads are like for Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April? Not only that the last 20k the roads were almost dry so they could have raced properly and awarded the sprint jersey to the deserved winner rather than giving a token version of the jersey to Chavanel. If they aren’t going to award points at the end of a stage they shouldn’t be handing out the jersey.

I remember Lance Armstrong winning a stage of the Giro in horrendous conditions the peloton didn’t cave in that day and Lance earned his win. Bernard Hinault to this day has no sensation in two of his fingers having won Liège-Bastogne-Liège. He went on that year to win Paris Roubaix despite hating riding the cobbles yet he did it because he felt he had to do it as a proper Champion.

Cycle racing is about dealing with the elements it’s not about sitting on a turbo trainer and seeing who can produce the greatest power output.

I have raced in August in Scotland for 12 hours solid in torrential rain that lasted all day and for my efforts won my club championship and the handicap prize. If the other riders that day had all protested to the organiser and got him to cancel the race I would have been furious.

It’s bike racing, it’s what makes it epic it’s why we love it. When we pit ourselves against each other and the elements it’s what it’s all about. This notion that we can sanitise cycling in some kind of mad health and safety gone mad kind of way will kill cycle racing.

K I’m off for a lie down in a darkened room to calm down I’m still so furious!

They better not pull the same stunt today or that’s it I’m no watching Le Tour and will watch my recording of Stage 7 of this years Giro on the Strada Bianche which was proper epic and even will bring a tear to the eye when you see Cuddles / The Bag o’ Washin try to wipe the mud from his World Champ rainbow stripes on his jersey as he crosses the finish line.

ESCA Track League Final Positions 2010

2010-06-30T16:08:00.002+01:00

Final Positions

Final Positions

Open

1st Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 176

2nd David Martin thebicycleworks.com 139

3rd Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 60

4th Kenneth Ayre City of Edinburgh RC 51

5th Nikolas Gowrie Peebles CC 46

6th Jeremy Greengrass Vortex RT 34

7th Colin Crawford Edinburgh Road Club 31

8th Roman Pellet Edinburgh Road Club 27

9th Gus Gillies Peebles CC 21

10th Greg Brown Dooleys Cycles RT 18

11th Graeme Mair Edinburgh Road Club 16

12th Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC 16

13th Tom Worthington Vortex RT 16

14th Chris Pritchard Dumfries CC 14

15th Ross Crook Edinburgh RC 14

16th David Lines Endura RT 14

17th Sean Hadden Edinburgh Road Club 14

18th Peter Janas Edinburgh Road Club 13

19th Stuart Wallace Edinburgh Road Club 13

20th Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 11

21st Paul McGreal Peebles CC 10

22nd Callum Watson City of Edinburgh RC 9

23rd Graham Barclay Leslie Bikes 9

24th Ruairi Mair Edinburgh Road Club 9

25th Louise Haston City of Edinburgh RC 9

26th Kyle Yates Leslie Bikes 9

27th Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC 8

28th Scott Macrae Team Leslie Bike Shop 8

29th James McCallum Endura RT 8

30th Martin Williamson Peebles CC 7

31st Euan Ramsay Spokes Cycles 7

32nd Nick Yeats Musselburgh RCC 7

33rd Fiona Walker Walkers Cycling Club 7

34th Jonathan Cosh Johnstone Wh 5

35th Ben Smart Musselburgh RCC 5

36th Emma Baird City of Edinburgh RC 5

37th Ayrton Pellet Edinburgh RC 5

38th Alan Maclean Glasgow Wh 4

39th Jonathan Mitchell Johnstone Wh 4

40th Tony Nugent East Kilbride RC 3

41st Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC 3

42nd Kevin Barclay Leslie Bikes 2

43rd Andres Gonzalez Spincycle USA 2

44th Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers 2

45th Sean Noon Edinburgh RC 2

46th Kenny Simm Edinburgh Road Club 1

47th Sandy Wallace Sandy Wallace Cycles 1

48th Victor Possee Ayr Roads CC 1

49th Colin Bark Vortex RT 1

50th Alex Coutts Giant Asia RT 1

51st Pete Sammon Sandy Wallace Cycles 1

52nd Greg Robertson Edinburgh RC 1

53rd Evan Oliphant Endura RT 1

54th David Crombie Dunfermline CC 1

55th Finlay Young Equipe Velo Ecosse 1

56th Rachel Henderson Edinburgh Road Club 1

57th Kayleigh Brogan City of Edinburgh RC 1

Junior

Roman Pellet Edinburgh Road Club 16

Greg Brown Dooleys Cycles RT 8

Ruairi Mair Edinburgh Road Club 7

Finlay Young Equipe Velo Ecosse 1

Women

Emma Baird City of Edinburgh RC 30

Louise Haston City of Edinburgh RC 16

Alison Chisholm Edinburgh RC 9

Rachel Henderson Edinburgh Road Club 7

Fiona Walker Walkers Cycling Club 3

Jenny Davis City of Edinburgh RC 2

Sarah Gleave Sandy Wallace Cycles 2

Claire Macauley Johnstone Wh 1

Kayleigh Brogan City of Edinburgh RC 1

Youth

Sean Hadden Edinburgh Road Club 55

Ayrton Pellet Edinburgh RC 44

Flora Gillies Peebles CC 31

Sean Noon Edinburgh RC 28

Dale McCallum Edinburgh Road Club 27

Kate McCullough-Young Edinburgh Racers 25

Gus Gillies Peebles CC 23

Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers 13

Kyle Yates Leslie Bikes 12

Stuart Balfour Peebles CC 6

Louise Borthwick Edinburgh Road Club 6

Hannah Ferguson Glentress Riders 5

Adam Crowther Perth United 3

Catherine Angus Carnegie Cyclones 1

Jonathan Mitchell Johnstone Wh 1

Sprinters Ladder League

Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 9

David Martin thebicycleworks.com 4

Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 4

Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC 3

Jonathan Cosh Johnstone Wh 2

Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC 2

Euan Ramsay Spokes Cycles 1

Graeme Mair Edinburgh Road Club 1

Stuart Wallace Edinburgh Road Club 1

Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 1

Kenneth Ayre City of Edinburgh RC 1

David Lines Endura RT 1

Morgan Trophy Motor Paced League Qualification League

David Martin thebicycleworks.com 6

Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 5

Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC 2

Ross Crook Edinburgh RC 2

Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 1

Callum Watson City of Edinburgh RC 1

Final

1 David Martin thebicycleworks.com 9.08.19

2 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC

3 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC

Keirin League

Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 10

David Martin thebicycleworks.com 6

Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 2

Nikolas Gowrie Peebles CC 2

Jeremy Greengrass Vortex RT 1

Graham Barclay Leslie Bikes 1

Season A (to 22 June) League

1st Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 74

2nd David Martin thebicycleworks.com 58

3rd Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 51

4th Colin Crawford Edinburgh Road Club 24

5th Kenneth Ayre Private Member 21

6th Nikolas Gowrie Peebles CC 17

7th Gus Gillies Peebles CC 15

8th Peter Janas Edinburgh Road Club 13

9th Stuart Wallace Edinburgh Road Club 10

10th Chris Pritchard Dumfries CC 10

11th Jeremy Greengrass Vortex RT 10

12th Kyle Yates Leslie Bikes 9

13th Scott Macrae Team Leslie Bike Shop 8

14th Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 8

15th Ross Crook Edinburgh RC 8

16th Martin Williamson Peebles CC 6

17th Euan Ramsay Spokes Cycles 6

18th Graeme Mair Edinburgh Road Club 6

19th Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC 6

20th Nick Yeats Musselburgh RCC 5

21st Tom Worthington Vortex RT 5

22nd Graham Barclay Leslie Bikes 4

23rd Jonathan Cosh Johnstone Wh 3

24th Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC 3

25th Paul McGreal Peebles CC 3

26th Alan Maclean Glasgow Wh 3

27th Louise Haston City of Edinburgh RC 3

28th Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC 2

29th Tony Nugent East Kilbride RC 2

30th Kevin Barclay Leslie Bikes 2

31st Greg Brown Dooleys Cycles RT 2

32nd Sean Noon Edinburgh RC 2

33rd Sandy Wallace Sandy Wallace Cycles 1

34th Callum Watson City of Edinburgh RC 1

35th Pete Sammon Sandy Wallace Cycles 1

36th Greg Robertson Edinburgh RC 1

37th Finlay Young Equipe Velo Ecosse 1

38th Rachel Henderson Edinburgh Road Club 1

Season B (29 June - 31 Aug) League
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 102

2 David Martin thebicycleworks.com 81

3 Kenneth Ayre City of Edinburgh RC 30

4 Nikolas Gowrie Peebles CC 29

5 Roman Pellet Edinburgh Road Club 27

6 Jeremy Greengrass Vortex RT 24

7 Greg Brown Dooleys Cycles RT 16

8 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC 14

9 David Lines Endura RT 14

10 Sean Hadden Edinburgh Road Club 14

11 Tom Worthington Vortex RT 11

12 Graeme Mair Edinburgh Road Club 10

13 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 9

14 Ruairi Mair Edinburgh Road Club 9

15 Callum Watson City of Edinburgh RC 8

16 James McCallum Endura RT 8

17 Colin Crawford Edinburgh Road Club 7

18 Paul McGreal Peebles CC 7

19 Fiona Walker Walkers Cycling Club 7

20 Ross CrookEdinburgh RC 6

21 Louise Haston City of Edinburgh RC 6

22 Gus Gillies Peebles CC 6

23 Graham Barclay Leslie Bikes 5

24 Ben Smart Musselburgh RCC 5

25 Emma Baird City of Edinburgh RC 5

26 Ayrton Pellet Edinburgh RC 5

27 Chris Pritchard Dumfries CC 4

28 Jonathan Mitchell Johnstone Wh 4

29 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh Road Club 3

30 Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 3

31 Jonathan Cosh Johnstone Wh 2

32 Nick Yeats Musselburgh RCC 2

33 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC 2

34 Andres Gonzalez Spincycle USA 2

35 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers 2

36 Martin Williamson Peebles CC 1

37 Euan Ramsay Spokes Cycles 1

38 Kenny Simm Edinburgh Road Club 1

39 Tony Nugent East Kilbride RC 1

40 Victor Possee Ayr Roads CC 1

41 Alan Maclean Glasgow Wh 1

42 Colin Bark Vortex RT 1

43 Alex Coutts Giant Asia RT 1

44 Evan Oliphant Endura RT 1

45 David Crombie Dunfermline CC 1

46 Kayleigh Brogan City of Edinburgh RC 1

ESCA Track League 29 June 2010 week 11

2010-06-29T14:51:00.002+01:00

Sorry bit of a rush today so no write up although you can read Euan's one here

Full results here

Just to say though at least there were no crashes and some excellent racing in particular the handicap races plus the Italian Pursuit with a catch for the winning team (yea I got a point Grin ) oh yeah some of those C riders were lapping the field again, you know who you are B B B B

ESCA Track League 15 June 2010 week 8 (week 9 really)

2010-06-15T15:18:00.003+01:00

Full Results here

This wee write up is brought to you by the nagging of one Rachel Henderson.

A lovely warm evening with not to strong a breeze blowing. Numbers of riders were a bit down, peeps on their holidays perhaps? Good fun all round if a tad sweaty and achy legs by the end of it that resulted in me being a big Jessie and getting the train back to Dunfie.

Youth riders 4 lap block handicap
1 Flora Gillies Peebles CC 1.22.71
2 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers
3 Sean Hadden Edinburgh Road Club

C riders 6 lap block handicap
1 Gus Gillies Peebles CC
2 Tom Worthington Vortex RT
3 Chris Pritchard Dumfries CC

A riders 12 lap scratch
1 David Martin thebicycleworks.com 3.51.48
2 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
3 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC

B riders 8 lap scratch
1 Kenneth Ayre Private Member 2.40.90
2 Alan Maclean Glasgow Wh
3 Euan Ramsay Spokes Cycles

I had problems getting my left foot clipped in when I went up onto the track and so landed up at the very back of the bunch for the start. I thought as I hate these short 6 or 8 lap races cos' I never can get a decent result I would do a crazy all or nothing Neil Laing stunt and attack straight away.

It worked for a bit but just like a Sprinters team leave a breakaway dangling just in front of the peloton until it suits them in the last 10k of a stage race, by the second last lap they and I knew they had me and so on the final lap they all came storming past except for Stuart Wallace who made it onto my shoulder but couldn't quite make it past me. As we wound it down he used some colourful language which seemed to imply my ancestry is of dubious merit.

Stuart was obviously still a bit pumped after that and took it out on his seat pin clamp as it was still slipping after all these weeks. The wee M6 allan bolt didn't stand a chance. After much faffing involving a pair of pliers and the combined mechanical genius of three of us couldn't get it sorted, so Stuart's "Old Faithful" his ESCA bike from last year with the hideous colour combo handle bar tape featuring a lurid pink on the right hand half of the bars was resurrected to allow him to continue racing.

Keirin heats (selected riders)
Heat 1
1 David Martin thebicycleworks.com 12.49
2 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC

Heat 2
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 13.09
2 Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC

Heat 3
1 Graham Barclay Leslie Bikes 12.63
2 Kevin Barclay Leslie Bikes

Heat 4
1 Gus Gillies Peebles CC 15.6
2 Louise Haston City of Edinburgh RC

Consolation de’il for non keirin riders
1 Ross Crook Edinburgh RC
2 Kenneth Ayre Private Member
3 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC

Quite chuffed with this one as I lasted till the final elimination when I got eliminated by Ross. I had one wee scare as I rode mostly at the front but towards the end I was flagging and then everyone was starting to appear on my shoulder except for one A rider who snuck up my inside which came as a surprise to me as I thought I was riding inside the red line and there wasn't enough space for someone to come through on my inside. Moral of the story is keep an eye out both ways.

Youth riders 500 m sprint
Heat 1
1 Sean Hadden Edinburgh RC 15.4
2 Ayrton Pellet Edinburgh RC

Heat 2
1 Kate McCullough-Young Edinburgh Racers 15.49
2 Flora Gillies Peebles CC

C Riders 500m sprint
Heat 1
1 Kenneth Ayre Private Member 13.18
2 Tom Worthington Vortex RT

Heat 2
1 Louise Haston City of Edinburgh RC 14.79
2 Rachel Henderson Edinburgh Road Club

Must admit I thought the result of this Heat was the other way round as I remember an excellent sprint for second place with the new svelte form of Fiona Walker giving it big licks with Louise, which got Mr Hoy very excited in the commentary box.

Just reread that sentence and I'm thinking there's more than one way of reading that.... perhaps I need an Editor?

Youth riders de’il
1 Sean Hadden Edinburgh RC
2 Ayrton Pellet Edinburgh RC
3 Kate McCullough-Young Edinburgh Racers

Keirin Final
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 12.47
2 David Martin thebicycleworks.com
3 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
4 Graham Barclay Leslie Bikes

Bruce was the personification of how to conserve energy and get into the right place at the right time to win what ever he entered, fantastic to watch. Well ok he came second in the earlier 12 lap scratch but you know what I mean. Any road up he's looking good for the Masters coming up in three weeks time.

C rider de'il
1 Chris Pritchard Dumfries CC
2 Tom Worthington Vortex RT
3 Gus Gillies Peebles CC

A + B riders de'il
1 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
2 Ross Crook Edinburgh RC
3 Kevin Barclay Leslie Bikes

C riders 15 lap scratch
1 Tom Worthington Vortex RT 5.37.44
2 Chris Pritchard Dumfries CC
3 Gus Gillies Peebles CC

A+B Riders 40 lap Scratch

This race was abandoned due to a crash that caused a sizable groove to be cut into the boards which will require the attention of a Chippy to sort out before anyone can ride that bit of the track again.

We made it to about lap 27 or so when towards the back of the bunch I think there was an overlapping of wheels that brought four riders down one of whom was our own Ross Crook who suffered a bang to the head that shattered his glasses and cut his head as well. A couple of the other crash victims were leaking blood from knees, hands and elbows. One guy in particular had a lot of blood running down his leg, very impressive just wish I took a photo to freak you all out with.

I was in an excellent position to see the crash unfolded. It was weird how calm I was as I saw the crash develop in "slow mo" in front of me, perhaps this is due to a lack of imagination. The rider in front of the guy I was slip streaming went down taking out the rider to his right and also to his left as he slipped down the track and I thought "ooo look someone is crashing" I better go up the track. Then the guy in front of me didn't manage to avoid the guys falling in front of him so he went down and I again thought "ooo another one is going down I better get further up the track" The guy next to me was doing the same as me and moved up to so I made it past the crash no problem.

Turns out they had to abandon the race as a massive groove had been cut into the track from the blue line down to the Cote d'Azur, which was just as well for me as I had let a massive gap go out and would never had made it back on to the bunch as it was all A riders that I would have had to chase down which was never going to happen unless they stopped for a picnic or to have a read of the latest copy of http://www.rouleur.cc magazine on the home straight

Fife Diet

2010-06-14T10:02:00.003+01:00

About a year and a half ago I heard on Rado 4's Food programme about a project called the Fife Diet. As a result of listening to the prog I checked out the website and read the blog entries and signed up for the newsletter.

As I don't eat meat, well my son does but it is on occasional basis and even then it's only chicken and sausages, I thought that as I was already fairly careful about choosing a "local" option when it came to buying food, even if that was from some other part of Scotland at least it wasn't getting flown halfway round the world for me to eat it. Then I should grow my own veg but as I live in a flat with no balcony the next best thing was to use my daughters back garden.

Well we did get some produce for our efforts albeit the slugs also got a fair chunk of the beetroot but the potatoes were lovely. Unfortunately this year it wasn't possible to grow anything at my daughters as they are in the process of building a new retaining wall just where the veggies would go plus the weather this year has been rubbish up until now. All is not lost as "she who must be obeyed" has even more plants and veggies on the go this year due to keeping a lot of her seedlings etc in doors and then putting them in cold frames for protection from the worst of the weather. One benefit of the bad weather seems to be a significant drop in the number of slugs and snails.

This weekend I managed to attend my first Fife Diet event which was very interesting

Meadowbank Track League 9th June (Week 8)

2010-06-10T15:38:00.005+01:00

Neil Laing of ERC used to write the Track League event reports over on ERC's website until he moved to Manchester. I took over from him albeit not in any kind of official way just no one else stepped into the breach and so I landed up doing it.

Neil has an excellent way of describing a race which sadly my memory and skills with the words can't match but it was nice when Rachel H one night at the Track League berated me for missing doing a write up for the previous week's racing as she said I made her laugh even to the point of spraying her coffee over her computer monitor with something I had written.

So to read Neil's write up for week 9 of the Track League head over here

My son Ruairi made it into that weeks Scotsman newspaper but they did manage to spell his name wrong :)

http://sport.scotsman.com/other-sports/Cycling-Capital-duo-in-fine.5350731.jp

ESCA Track League June 2010 (weeks 6 & 7)

2010-06-01T14:54:00.000+01:00

yooyatoob

Nuff said.... Sad

ESCA Track League May 2010 (weeks 2-5)

2010-05-28T15:08:00.001+01:00

May's results

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

ESCA Track League 20/04/10 (week 1)

2010-04-20T14:11:00.009+01:00

First night of this years Track League was a chilly affair. Despite the chill it was good to see lots of new faces particularly amongst the youngsters who were full of enthusiasm.

To add to the atmosphere a large contingent of spectators who were mates of one of the new boys were making lots of oh and ah noises which all added to a great atmosphere (name of the new boy escapes me till the results get posted on the ESCA website http://www.esca.uk.com/mtl/2010/week1.html) who is a bit quick and was contributing to some exciting racing amongst the C riders.

I was a tad distracted trying to borrow chain ring and sprocket to try and up the gear on my son's bike so I was a bit rubbish at noting who did what to whom. I remember doing a weird Block handicap race with four or was it three B riders chasing an imaginary Team on the otherside of the track (We need more B riders!).

Bruce Croall won a scratch event and Dave Martin won the last race of the night by managing to get a quarter of a lap ahead of the bunch in very impressive style.

From the two photos of the C riders Block Handicap race, you can see it was getting a bit gloomy as the evening went on and the last race was run without floodlights as no one had 50p for the meter :)

2009 Top Ten Albums (and one EP)

2009-11-19T16:21:00.004Z

1    Steve Hackett - Out of the Tunnel's Mouth
This has everything a guitar player would want from an album plus the vocals aren't bad either.

2    Bella Hardy - Bella Hardy
I can hear various influences but Eliza Carthy is the strongest. A very interesting listen as the structure of a few of the tunes are quite unique.

3    Gavin Moore - Tonnata
Lovely songs a strong flavour of Irish but not folksy

4    Various - Trades Roots Live
A cd to raise money for the Trade Roots venue to replace the seats!
Not a dud track on this wee collection

5    Bon Iver - Blood Bank EP
Not sure if this qualifies as it is an EP not an LP but I like a lot so it's in my list.

6    Sophie Madeline - Love.Life.Ukulele
I love the Uke and it just so happened this album came out this year so I can include a uke cd in my Top Ten. Sophie has a lovely voice and writes some lovely tunes.

7    Stackridge - A Victory for Common Sense
This is slowly growing on me but I'm still not totally sure if I like it but it's better than some of the other albums I've not included so it's made the Top Ten.

Other CDs I'm intending to get when I have a bit more dosh are...

Seasick Steve - Man from Another Time,
Unthanks - Here's The Tender Coming
and finally The Vatersay Boys - Sound of Vatersay

If you include the ones I haven't yet purchased then that would make my Top Ten

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Love Hope Strength

2009-11-05T09:47:00.002Z

Love Hope Strength

The above is supposed to be an animated gif

ESCA Track League Final Positions 2009

2009-09-09T12:45:00.008+01:00

Here are the final results for the Track League. I suspect for myself I won't get so highly placed next year as the last couple of weeks in the C's I think I should have been in the B's.

Who knows maybe I will have a great time next year. I'm even considering doing some training through the off season both on turbo trainer and maybe even getting a set of rollers to keep the spinning going and for warm downs etc.

Open

	Open		Pts
1st	Bruce Croall	City of Edinburgh RC	122
2nd	David Martin	the bicycleworks.com	96
3rd	Nicky Hall	City of Edinburgh RC	63
4th	Graeme Steen	City of Edinburgh RC	47
5th	Ross Crook	Edinburgh RC	46
6th	Colin Crawford	Edinburgh RC	36
7th	Graeme Mair	Edinburgh RC	35
8th	Derek Timmins	Musselburgh RCC	33
9th	Derek Smith	City of Edinburgh RC	30
10th	Ben McCullogh Young	City of Edinburgh RC	29
11th	Angus Gilles	Peebles CC	27
12th	Martin Ross	Musselburgh RCC	18
13th	Euan Ramsay	Spokes RT	17
14th	Callum Watson	Unattached	17
15th	Stuart Wallace	Edinburgh RC	14
16th	Kyle Yates	Edinburgh Racers	12
17th	Scott McDiarmid	Sandy Wallace Cycles	11
18th	Andy Laing	Musselburgh RCC	11
19th	Stuart McClusky	VC Glasgow South	11
20th	Daisy Sherwood	City of Edinburgh RC	10
21st	Nick Yeats	Musselburgh RCC	8
22nd	Sandy Wallace	Sandy Wallace Cycles	7
23rd	Tony Nugent	East Kilbride RC	7
24th	Allan Clark	Sandy Wallace Cycles	7
25th	Ricardo Parreirinha	Scottish Downhill Team	6
26th	Alastair Taylor	Musselburgh RCC	6
27th	Patrick Galbraith	Equipe Velo Ecosse	6
28th	Kevin Tait	Edinburgh RC	5
29th	Neil Laing	Edinburgh RC	5
30th	Tom Arnstein	Carnegie Cyclones	5
31st	Paul Newnham	Edinburgh RC	4
32nd	Oliver Del Corto	Edinburgh RC	4
33rd	Graham Barclay	Team Leslie Bike Shop	4
34th	Louise Haston	Unattached	4
35th	Ben Muir	Edinburgh Racers	4
36th	Kevin Barclay	Endura RT	3
37th	Kate Cullen	R & TC Groenewoud	3
38th	Alison Chisholm	Edinburgh RC	3
39th	Jonathan Mitchell	Johnstone Wh	3
40th	Brynley Davies	Edinburgh RC	2
41st	Sarah Mitchell	Johnstone Wh	2
42nd	Rachel Henderson	Edinburgh RC	2
43rd	Greg Brown	Glasgow Nightingale	2
44th	Greg Robertson	Edinburgh RC	1
45th	Sam Mathews	Edinburgh Racers	1

Junior

Ben McCullogh Young	City of Edinburgh RC	29
Callum Watson	Unattached	16
Sarah Mitchell	Johnstone Wh	2

Women

Daisy Sherwood	City of Edinburgh RC	20
Alison Chisholm	Edinburgh RC	11
Louise Haston	Unattached	9
Kate Cullen	R & TC Groenewoud	3
Sarah Mitchell	Johnstone Wh	2
Emma Baird	Unattached	2
Rachel Henderson	Edinburgh RC	2
Maddy Robinson	Edinburgh RC	1

Youth

Angus Gilles	Peebles CC	30
Flora Gilles	Peebles CC	26
Sean Noon	Edinburgh RC	26
Adam Stobbart	Edinburgh Racers	25
Ruairi Mair	Unattached	24
Sean Hadden	Unattached	20
Kate McCullogh Young	Edinburgh Racers	17
Kyle Yates	Edinburgh Racers	14
Michael Butcher	Sandy Wallace Cycles	12
Stuart McClusky	VC Glasgow South	12
Tom Arnstein	Carnegie Cyclones	11
Hannah Ferguson	Glentress Riders	10
Joe Evans	Edinburgh Racers	7
Ben Muir	Edinburgh Racers	7
Rory Mellis	Carnegie Cyclones	7
Rosie Yeats	Edinburgh Racers	6
Patrick Galbraith	Equipe Velo Ecosse	6
Jonathan Mitchell	Johnstone Wh	6
Sam Waterston	Glentress Riders	6
Cameron Balfour	Peebles CC	5
Stuart Balfour	Peebles CC	5
Flora Matthews	Edinburgh Racers	3
Louise Borthwick	Edinburgh RC	3
Greg Brown	Glasgow Nightingale	2
Craig Owen	Peebles CC	1
Sam Mathews	Edinburgh Racers	1
Morven Risk	Edinburgh Racers	1
Emma Borthwick	Edinburgh RC	1

Sprinters Ladder League

Bruce Croall	City of Edinburgh RC	9
Graeme Steen	City of Edinburgh RC	6
Andy Laing	Musselburgh RCC	3
David Martin	the bicycleworks.com	2
Ross Crook	Edinburgh RC	2
Derek Smith	City of Edinburgh RC	1
Martin Ross	Musselburgh RCC	1
Tony Nugent	East Kilbride RC	1
Stuart Wallace	Edinburgh RC	1
Nick Yeats	Musselburgh RCC	1
Alastair Taylor	Musselburgh RCC	1
Greg Brown	Glasgow Nightingale	1

Morgan Trophy Motor Paced League
Qualification League

David Martin	the bicycleworks.com	7
Bruce Croall	City of Edinburgh RC	6
Nicky Hall	City of Edinburgh RC	5
Derek Smith	City of Edinburgh RC	4
Alastair Taylor	Musselburgh RCC	3
Nick Yeats	Musselburgh RCC	2
Ross Crook	Edinburgh RC	2
Kyle Yates	Edinburgh Racers	1

Final

To be held 8 Sept 2009

Keirin League

Bruce Croall	City of Edinburgh RC	8
Graeme Steen	City of Edinburgh RC	5
Derek Timmins	Musselburgh RCC	3
David Martin	the bicycleworks.com	2
Nicky Hall	City of Edinburgh RC	2
Derek Smith	City of Edinburgh RC	1
Callum Watson	Unattached	1

Blogged with the Flock Browser

ESCA Track League August 18 (week 18)

2009-09-09T12:05:00.003+01:00

A definite air of the autumnal weather what with the tough old wind on the back straight tonight which I'm sure many a Meadowbank trackie will be very familiar with and the floodlights coming on towards the end of the evening.

Name Club Time
Flying lap for new riders
Sam Waterston Glentress Riders 20.11
Louise Borthwick Edinburgh RC 20.65
Emma Borthwick Edinburgh RC 24.15

First time up for a pair of Borthwicks one of whom recorded an excellent time of 20.65, well anyone faster than my flying lap time is excellent in my book:)

Louise and Emma were greatly helped by Rachel when various mechanicals happened just before they got up to do their laps, sadly not helped by us blokes sitting gassing our heads off rather than being helpful ooops sorry Rachel.

Youth riders 4 lap block handicap
1 Louise Borthwick Edinburgh RC 1.20.23
2 Flora Gilles Peebles CC
3 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers

Straight into her first race of the evening and Louise wins her first race! Well done Louise.

C riders 6 lap scratch
1 Jonathan Mitchell Johnstone Wh 2.10.10
2 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC
3 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT

Shock horror Stuart didn't do his usual and win the six lapper but as we will see young Jonathan is a force to reckon with ie he's blooming quick particularly over a short distance.

A riders 12 lap scratch
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 3.59.59
2 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
3 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC

Mr Croall up to his usual form bagging this one.

B riders 8 lap scratch
1 Graeme Mair 2.54.69
2 Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC
3 Tony Nugent East Kilbride RC

I had a tactic for this one but once on the track and we had done a couple of laps I came up with another one which was to use master Jonathan adopts evil laugh mode..... nah ha ha.

Jonathan was taking it easy in his first B race whenever he got on the front and so I thought I would attack just as he pulled off the front as he would slow the rider behind him. Well it worked better than I could have hoped as I assumed whoever was on my wheel would stay on my wheel and I would have to fight it out with them but as it was Jonathan slowed the rider behind him and then blocked the rider who was behind me, bonus and blooming excellent for me as I landed up with a half lap gap which got whittled a way at but was enough for my win.

Morgan Trophy Heats
Ht 1
1 David Martin the bicycleworks.com 5.46.81
2 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
3 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC

Dunno what happened here but Bruce seemed to loose his usual power for this and David got a fine win.

Youth riders 500 m sprint (2 heats if required)
Ht 1
1 Flora Gilles Peebles CC 16.72
2 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers
3 Emma Borthwick Edinburgh RC

Ht 2
1 Sam Waterston Glentress Riders 15.99
2 Sean Hadden Unattached
3 Hannah Ferguson Glentress Riders

C riders 500 m sprint (2 heats if required)

Ht 1
1 Louise Haston Unattached 15.44
2 Sarah Mitchell Johnstone Wh
3 Rachel Henderson Edinburgh RC

Ht 2
1 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT 14.27
2 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
3 Daisy Sherwood City of Edinburgh RC

Again dunno what happened here (was there sum fink in the air that night Fernando?) as I assumed Daisy would wipe the floor with us well me at least. As it was Euan won this by a good length maybe more.

Sprinters ladder (selected riders)

Ht 1
1 Jonathan Mitchell Johnstone Wh 13.95
2 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT
3 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC

Euan and I had no sooner completed a warm down lap but we were up again and to rub salt in the wounds we were up against the flippin' quick Jonathan. I tried my damnedest to stay on Jonathan's wheel but he just pulled away with ease this left me with Euan sitting on my wheel and despite my trying to beat him to the line it didn't work, grrrrrr

Ht 2
1 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC 14.64
2 Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC
3 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC

Stuart did well against Colin and Derek. To be honest I thought it would have been between Colin and Derek but as I was still trying to get my lungs back in my chest I didn't see what happened.

Ht 3
1 Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC 13.73
2 Tony Nugent East Kilbride RC
3 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC

Ht 4
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 11.98
2 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com

Our Bruce found his legs again for this one.

Youth riders de’il
1 Sam Waterston Glentress Riders
2 Hannah Ferguson Glentress Riders
3 Flora Gilles Peebles CC

C riders de’il
1 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT
2 Louise Haston Unattached
3 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC

I was to busy gassing (again) with Colin to see what happened in this one. I will take a stab in the dark and say Euan didn't sit on the front and tow everyone round more likely Stuart did and then Louise and Euan got round him on the last lap

A + B riders de’il
1 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
2 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
3 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC

Dooh Bruce lost his legs again!

A + B + C riders 10 k scratch
1 Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC 14.08.35
2 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
3 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
4 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC

Note to self don't sit on Bruce's wheel.

I was staying at the back sitting on Bruce's wheel liking how he was letting riders who had just been at the front tuck in in front of him as he didn't want to go through. All went fine but when gaps started appearing there was no way I could keep his wheel with his amazing motor bike engine like accelerations to close the gaps.

Eventually I was in no mans land with the peleton half a lap ahead and a few stragglers between me and them. I chased and chased but I was eventually lapped at which point I eased up to climb off but Ken who was looking after the lap counter shouted at me to catch up with Rachel and work together. So I speeded up again (meanwhile I was lapped again) eventually caught up with Rachel gave her a tow for a few laps and then she shouted at me she could do turns. So we worked away still getting lapped occasionally, I had gone into time trial mode and wasn't even paying attention to how many laps were left only to notice that Rachel was sprinting past me, puzzled I was wondering why she was doing that when it dawned on me it was the last lap for us, cruelly I managed to come round her for second last. That'll look good on the ol' palmares

At the front end of the race all I was aware of was the group lapping me was mostly being led by David Martin. Contary to the result shown on the ESCA website and here Colin Crawford didn't win this race a simple mix up with number recognition so I think I'm right in saying David Martin really won it.

Well a good night despite the slightly chilly weather. All I can say is my poor old legs and lungs were feeling it as I pedaled my weary way home.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

August 04 (week 16)

2009-08-05T07:46:00.014+01:00

LELDSC03296
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

Finally the rain stopped!

July was hopeless no track and caused a lot of grief for riders of LEL London Edinburgh London which I helped out for a mad continuous 42 hours. I will ride it next time so I can avoid volenteering! The LEL riders had to suffer flooded roads, no dry gear to change into plus Controls struggling to cope with the number of riders wanting to get shelter from the rain. Just to rub salt in the wounds there was a strong head wind blowing when the riders turned south.
All that said back to the track racing...

Name Club Time

Flying lap for new riders
Sarah Mitchell Johnstone Wh 18.41

A riders 15 lap scratch
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 4.48.11
2 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
3 Kevin Barclay Endura RT

Bruce was sporting his latest British Champ jersey and looked pretty fine in it to.

Youth riders 4 lap block handicap
1 Rory Mellis Carnegie Cyclones 1.24.71
2 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers
3 Sean Hadden Unattached

B + C riders 12 lap Block Handicap
1 Angus Gilles Peebles CC 4.12.88
2 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
3 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC

Well my last ride as a C as it was to turn out. Dunno where Angus came from but he did a great job pulling me back cos' I was trying I tell ya! Blooming well got me in the home straight darn it.

Youth riders - Devil
1 Kate McCullogh Young Edinburgh Racers
2 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC
3 Flora Gilles Peebles CC

Course des prime – 1 point to winner of each sprint lap
C riders 6 laps
Lap 4 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC
Lap 2 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC
Lap 0 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT 2.10.15

Stuart did well as he usually does with this distance but you could see he was slowing where Euan was getting faster towards the end. So not a clean sweep for Stuart who had been on his own for much of the race.

B riders 12 laps
Lap 10 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
Lap 8 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
Lap 6 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
Lap 4 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
Lap 2 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
Lap 0 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC 4.30.40

Well my first B race was a bit embarrassing. Despite the fact there was only three of us racing as Ben gave it a body swerve Derek stomped all over this one not helped by the fact that I was all set to climb off at the second last sprint thinking it was the last, dooh! When I eventually did finish I was half a lap behind and I got harraunged with cries "you can't get back into the C's just pretending to ride slowly"

Youth riders 4 laps
Lap 2 Kate McCullogh Young Edinburgh Racers
Lap 0 Kate McCullogh Young Edinburgh Racers 1.35.04

A riders 16 laps
Lap 14 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
Lap 12 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
Lap 10 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
Lap 8 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
Lap 6 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Lap 4 Kevin Barclay Endura RT
Lap 2 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
Lap 0 David Martin the bicycleworks.com 5.19.71

Youths - Handicap
Heat 1
1 Flora Gilles Peebles CC 36.56
2 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers
3 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC
Heat 2
1 Flora Matthews Edinburgh Racers 38.32
2 Stuart McClusky VC Glasgow South
3 Kate McCullogh Young Edinburgh Racers

Italian Pursuit
Winning team
David Martin the bicycleworks.com 2.53.11
Nick Yeats Musselburgh RCC
Ross Crook Edinburgh RC
Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC
Rachel Henderson Edinburgh RC
Sarah Mitchell Johnstone Wh
Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
Kyle Yates Edinburgh Racers

B&C riders 7 K scratch
1 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC 10.38.12
2 Tony Nugent East Kilbride RC
3 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT
4 Rachel Henderson Edinburgh RC

Well this was more up my street and it showed. I did a couple attacks one of which had an interesting moment with a girl from Musselburgh club as I was making a move towards the front up on the blue when she went to swing off the front and got a surprise that I was there. Scared the guy behind to but for some reason I was completely relaxed about it all. As she slowed up and stayed on the front it had the lovely effect that she slowed the bunch so I got a lovely jump off the front.

After a bit Tony was catching me so I eased up and worked with him till the last lap when I went up to the blue but he didn't or couldn't come through so I kept pushing for the line and won it. On the final laps I noticed that the rest of the field had eithter called it a day or were working in a couple of small groups with Rachel working really hard in particular all on her own. Paul would have been impressed with the effort she was putting in.

ESCA 10k scratch championship
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 13.36.83
2 Ross Crook Edinburgh RC
3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
4 Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC
5 Kevin Barclay Endura RT
6 Martin Ross Musselburgh RCC

ESCA 10k Croall leading
photo Alistair Watson

Good PR and Bad PR

2009-07-23T09:54:00.007+01:00

Here's a great piece of viral marketing which was posted on You(ya)Toobe

Nothing To Hide Campaign

Whereas United Airlines came out with this statement trying to recover a bad situation but failing...

On Tuesday, United Airlines spokeswoman Robin Urbanski issued a statement about the incident.

"This has struck has a chord with us. We are in conversations with one another to make what happened right, and while we mutually agree that this should have been fixed much sooner, Dave Carroll’s excellent video provides United with a unique learning opportunity that we would like to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us," the statement said.

Which was in response to this superb piece where the little guy "sticks it to the man" as our colonial cousins like to say. Not only that Dave Carroll is in the top twenty of iTunes for his efforts, nice one.

ESCA 2009 Track League 23 June (week 10)

2009-06-24T05:51:00.006+01:00

June 23 (week 10)
Name Club Time
Flying lap for new riders
Rachel Henderson Edinburgh RC 21.19
Eliza Yeats Edinburgh Racers 25.41
Morven Risk Edinburgh Racers 26.6

Youth riders 4 lap block handicap
1 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers
2 Sean Hadden Unattached
3 Kate McCullogh Young Edinburgh Racers

C riders 6 lap scratch
1 Angus Gilles Peebles CC
2 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC
3 Ben Muir Edinburgh Racers

Felt like a bag of spanners for this one just couldn't get going at all. I blame the terra forming I was doing in my daughters back garden on Sunday. Angus was back with the C's this week and boy he is quick and was dishing out the pain in bucket loads.

A riders 12 lap scratch
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
2 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com

B riders 8 lap scratch
1 Callum Watson Unattached
2 Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC
3 Ricardo Parreirinha Scottish Downhill Team

Youth riders 500 m sprint
Heat 1
1 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers 19.82
2 Morven Risk Edinburgh Racers
3 Eliza Yeats Edinburgh Racers
Heat 2
1 Angus Gilles Peebles CC 15.81
2 Sean Hadden Unattached
3 Kate McCullogh Young Edinburgh Racers
Heat 3
1 Kyle Yates Edinburgh Racers 14.94
2 Ben Muir Edinburgh Racers
3 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC

C riders 500 m sprint
Heat 1
1 Kevin Tait Edinburgh RC
2 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT
3 Alison Chisholm Edinburgh RC

Darn I missed this (getting my stuff together for the next heat) but well done Kev for winning this one. Must admit I thought this would have been right up Ali's street.

Heat 2
1 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
2 Rachel Henderson Edinburgh RC
3 Fiona Walker Walkers Cycling Club

Got told off by the missus when I got home about this one. Apparently what I should have done was let Rachel and Fiona fight it out for a lap n' a half and then jump round em' but as it was after half a lap I went into time trial mode and made sure I had it in the bag to make up for the previous race.

Keirin Heats (selected riders)
Heat 1
1 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
2 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC
3 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
Heat 2
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
2 Callum Watson Unattached
3 Oliver Del Corto Edinburgh RC
Heat 3
1 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
2 Graham Barclay Team Leslie Bike Shop
3 Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC
Youth riders de’il
1 Sean Hadden Unattached
2 Kate McCullogh Young Edinburgh Racers
3 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC

C riders de’il
1 Angus Gilles Peebles CC
2 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
3 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT

Good grief I got second in a Devil again! Although afterwards Euan said he was a bit confused at the time as to how many laps there were to go to the finish and realised to late that there was a reason why Angus and I were speeding up!

A + B riders de’il
1 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
2 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC
3 Kyle Yates Edinburgh Racers

Keirin Final
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
2 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
4 Callum Watson Unattached

C riders 5 K scratch with sprints
1 Angus Gilles Peebles CC
2 Kevin Tait Edinburgh RC
3 Euan Ramsay Spokes RT
Sp 1 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
Sp 2 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
Sp 3 Angus Gilles Peebles CC

I was very pleased with my initial attack on this one. Ali and Rachel were peeling off the front and Kevin was pulling everyone one round at the front. I had hung back and worked my way up behind Rachel came round her at the very top of turn three and attacked using the drop in height to really get the speed up. So much so that on the back straight I somehow managed to lift my back wheel, freaky!

I got Sprint 1 and managed to hang on for Sprint 2 but Angus got me for Sprint 3 by which time was I absolutely done in for the last lap but Kevin did well to get second place while Angus took first.

A + B riders 15 k scratch
1 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
2 Graham Barclay Team Leslie Bike Shop
3 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC
4 Oliver Del Corto Edinburgh RC

ESCA 2009 Track League 16 June (week 9)

2009-06-24T05:12:00.008+01:00

June 16 (week 9)
Name Club Time
A + B riders 20 lap block handicap
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 6.30.83
2 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com

C riders 10 lap scratch
1 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC 3.36.97
2 Alison Chisholm Edinburgh RC
3 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC

I blew it in this one due to being over confident that I had it in the bag and blooming well eased up on the last lap to let Ali and Stuart come past me. Won't be making that mistake again always push to the line.

Youth riders 4 lap block handicap
1 Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers 1.08.11
2 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC
3 Flora Gilles Peebles CC
Sprinters Ladder (selected riders)
Heat 1
1 Greg Brown Glasgow Nightingale 13.39
2 Ricardo Parreirinha Scottish Downhill Team
3
Heat 2
1 Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 14.29
2 Oliver Del Corto Edinburgh RC
3
Heat 3
1 David Martin the bicycleworks.com 14.83
2 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC
3
Heat 4
1 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 12.56
2 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC

Consolation de’il for non finalists + non-keirin riders (not youths) (2 heats if required)
Heat 1
1 Callum Watson Unattached
2 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
3 Louise Haston Unattached

I had forgotten about this one. Usually I sit on the front and tow folks round and come third but somehow I came second in this. Was there a sprint at the end, who knows?

Youth riders 500 m handicap
Heat 1
1 Flora Gilles Peebles CC 31.48
2 Ruairi Mair Unattached
3

Morgan Trophy motor paced
Heat 1
1 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 5.56.36
2 Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC
3 Kyle Yates Edinburgh Racers
Heat 2
1 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
2 Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
3 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC

Women 500 m sprint
1 Alison Chisholm Edinburgh RC
2 Daisy Sherwood City of Edinburgh RC
3

Ali was being a foxy thing on this one and and gave Diasy something to think about by keeping behind Daisy and leaving it to the last moment to come past Daisy in a beautifully timed sprint.

A + B riders 15 lap points
1 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
2 Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC
3 Callum Watson Unattached

Youth riders de’il
1 Ruairi Mair Unattached
2 Sean Hadden Unattached
3 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC

Roo despite promising Mr David Hoy that as Roo had forgotten his number he wouldn't get placed in any races that night. He went and won this one and so Mr Hoy took great delight in teasing him over the PA "that he had broken his promise"

C riders 8 lap block handicap
1 Ben Muir Edinburgh Racers 2.53.17
2 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
3 Emma Baird Unattached

I had a cracking time in this one although my colleagues Ali and (oops I've forgotten his name) will tell you a different story! As Neil mentioned previously organising C riders to work together to chase down another group is like herding cats but I think we did manage not to badly to start with but as the laps progressed and Ali's legs gave out and we started to catch tail enders from the group a head we started to lose it mostly my fault for kicking through to hard when Ali peeled off and so it was every man for himself.

At the front there were two left but as I got close to them they split apart leaving Ben Muir at the front and me chasing him with 3/4 of lap to go. Someone shouted at me to stay on his wheel which I did and I tried to come round him on the final bend and with an all out sprint to the line Ben held me off by what looked to me like a tyres width (which in the case of my tubs is 19mm). I even managed to shake hands with Ben coming out of the banking and not fall off. I must be starting to get the hang of this track marlarky

A + B riders 40 lap scratch
1 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC 10.29.87
2 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
3 Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC
4 Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC

ESCA 2009 Track League 9 June (week 8)

2009-06-24T05:11:00.004+01:00

Name Club Time
Flying Lap for new riders
Sam Mathews Edinburgh Racers 18.74
Cameron Balfour Peebles CC 19.68
Stuart Balfour Peebles CC 20.55

A riders 15 lap scratch
1 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 4.59.48
2 Ross Crook Edinburgh RC
3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Youth riders 4 lap block handicap
1 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC 1.26.15
2 Stuart Balfour Peebles CC

3 Flora Gilles Peebles CC
B + C riders 12 lap block handicap
1 Angus Gilles Peebles CC
2 Allan Clark Sandy Wallace Cycles
3 Sam Mathews Edinburgh Racers

Youth riders de’il
1 Cameron Balfour Peebles CC
2 Stuart Balfour Peebles CC
3 Hannah Ferguson Glentress Riders

Course des prime – 1 point to winner of each sprint lap
C riders 6 laps
Lap 2 Ben Muir Edinburgh Racers
Lap 4 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
Lap 6 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC 2.09.18

Nice and short with a sprint every second lap I just hammered it for the last four laps and cleaned up! As a result I went into Ali's Book of Crimes Against Ali

B riders 12 laps
Lap 2 Tom Arnstein Carnegie Cyclones
Lap 4 Angus Gilles Peebles CC
Lap 6 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
Lap 8 Allan Clark Sandy Wallace Cycles
Lap 10 Callum Watson Unattached
Lap 12 Stuart McClusky VC Glasgow South 4.14.64

Youth riders 4 laps
Lap 2 Cameron Balfour Peebles CC
Lap 4 Cameron Balfour Peebles CC 1.32.40

A riders 16 laps
Lap 2 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Lap 4 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Lap 6 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Lap 8 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Lap 10 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Lap 12 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
Lap 14 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
Lap 16 David Martin the bicycleworks.com 5.23.59

Youth riders 500 m handicap Heat 1
1 Rosie Yeats Edinburgh Racers 38.96
2 Stuart Balfour Peebles CC
3 Cameron Balfour Peebles CC

Youth riders 500 m handicap Heat 2
1 Ruairi Mair Unattached 34.75
2 Sean Noon Edinburgh RC
3 Hannah Ferguson Glentress Riders

A, B + C riders Italian pursuit (chosen teams)
Winning team Callum Watson Unattached 1.55.87
Euan Ramsay Spokes RT
Sandy Wallace Sandy Wallace Cycles
David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC
Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC
Tom Arnstein Carnegie Cyclones

A, B + C riders Italian pursuit (chosen teams)
Winning team Neil Laing Edinburgh RC 2.15.43
Kevin Tait Edinburgh RC
Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC
Stuart McClusky VC Glasgow South
Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
Ross Crook Edinburgh RC

C riders 3 k scratch with sprints
1 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
2 Neil Laing Edinburgh RC
3 Stuart Wallace Edinburgh RC
Sp 1 Neil Laing Edinburgh RC
Sp 2 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC

Ye gods I won a race, better watch they may kick me up to the bad boys in the B's. I kept quiet for the first sprint and then gave it lots of welly for the last half getting Sprint 2 and First Place on the line.

B riders 8 k scratch with sprints
1 Stuart McClusky VC Glasgow South
2 Derek Timmins Musselburgh RCC
3 Allan Clark Sandy Wallace Cycles
Sp 1 Ben McCullogh Young City of Edinburgh RC
Sp 2 Stuart McClusky VC Glasgow South
Sp 3 Stuart McClusky VC Glasgow South

A riders 10 k scratch with sprints
1 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
2 Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC
3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
4 Nick Yeats Musselburgh RCC
Sp 1 Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC
Sp 2 David Martin the bicycleworks.com
Sp 3 David Martin the bicycleworks.com

Audaxspotting...

2009-06-18T14:30:00.001+01:00

Quote from: rogerzilla on May 18, 2009, 08:16:34 pm

Choose life. Choose audaxing. Choose mudguards. Choose Brooks. Choose a fucking big saddlebag, choose a map trap, choose route sheets, choose XR, RB, S/O and dynamos. Choose rain, wind, sleet and snow. Choose the only type of bike that never gets stolen. Choose Sudocrem. Choose a lucky hat and a gilet that went out of fashion in the 1980s. Choose flapjacks in a range of fucking flavours. Choose a 600 and wonder what the fuck you're doing up a Welsh mountain in the dark. Choose sitting in a village hall trying not to make eye contact with your mind-numbing, spirit crushing fellow riders, drinking orange juice out of a Tetrapak. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, babbling about the 50/50 rule in some urine-soaked bus shelter, nothing more than an embarrassment to the fucking sportives they spawned to replace you.

Choose your future. Choose audaxing.

Edinburgh Nocturne 2009

2009-06-17T16:52:00.005+01:00

20090530_Edinburgh_Album_174
Originally uploaded by Larry_Hickmott

Ruratees riding the Edinburgh Nocturne

20090530_Edinburgh_Album_183
Originally uploaded by Larry_Hickmott

Ruratees again

An excellent evenings cycle racing particularly as we were situated at the Bow Bar (with some excellent ales) and had a relatively clear bit of railing to lean as the racing went by.

We took great delight in cheering on fellow club mates but particularly winding up Ruratees as he is a fellow hasher and would expect dogs abuse from us not encouragement. Despite our haranguing Ruratees came third by the way. The winner of the folding bike race had a monster chain ring on and obviously the ability to turn it round.

ESCA 2009 Track League 9 June

2009-06-11T18:38:00.003+01:00

A cold night was the 2nd of June and for whatever reason myself and Neil were not going at all well. I didn't manage to get placed in any of the races. Youngest son at least managed a first in a 500 metre Handicapped heat plus a third place in a Devil. I even failed to control the Devil by sitting on the front like I usually do instead I managed two or three laps towing everyone round but was swallowed up and boxed in with no where to go.

The evening of the 9th of June felt much more like a summers evening and my results were much better as a result or was it due to the fact that a couple of last weeks C riders had got promoted up to the B's leaving me a better chance, me thinks it was the latter.

What was a bigger shock was that I won two sprints for the first time ever in a 12 lapper with sprints at 4, 8 and final lap. I won the 8th and last laps. I also think I won one of the Sprints in 6 lap Course de Prime but will have to wait till they post the results to confirm that one as it was blooming close and as usual the commentator's comments were blown in away in the wind. I was on flipping cloud 9 afterwards I may be developing a sprint after all.

ESCA 2009 Track League 26 May

2009-05-29T11:34:00.006+01:00

A rather excellent night for the Fuzzyies,

I managed a second, third and a fourth places while Roo got a second and a very impressive first place!

In the four lap handicap race for the yoofs Roo was at the very back of the field with two other lads. Initially Sam Hadden was quicker away and Roo left a gap but he kept working riding solo and catching each group in front of him and pushing on to catch the next group so that on the final banking into the home straight with a very determined look on his face it came down to a four man sprint which he won! From the amount of speed he had coming out of the banking after the finish it looked like they wouldn't have seen him coming plus he managed to throw the bike at the line to do it in proper style.

One incident that got a good laugh was in the Sprint heats one of the A Riders can't remember who but on the final banking he came storming past his opponent and as he did so he called out "Choo Choo"!

A good nights racing and it was almost warm! For a proper write up and to see the words "power house" used out of context read this....

More Track this Sunday with a Yoof Omnium then Tuesday Track League plus ESCA championships on Thursday night.

Meeting up for a jar or two on Saturday night which should be a hoot with this . Only problem is Roo will be along so we will have to find a pub with a beer garden, could be tricky in the Grassmarket since Dweebe is after some proper beer. Problems problems...

ESCA 2009 Track League 12 May

2009-05-20T16:35:00.004+01:00

Despite a pesky cold I haven't been able to shift for the last two weeks, I managed a second place!

Mostly this was due to Neil who provided an excellent lead out for five laps then it was just a matter of coming round him (as he slowed down due to being puggelt) and try to fend off the xxx coming round me for first. Sadly I couldn't hold xx off but least I managed to hang onto second.

All very exciting stuff considering how my lungs were doing and how blooming cold it was at the track. youngest son managed to improve on his preivous efforts at the track but with his new found determination he got a bit confused at the end of one race and kept hammering away as he thought he still had a lap to go but instead raninto the back of a slowing down rider. No harm came to anyone invloved in the ensuing tumble except my shorts that my son was wearing (darn it!)

ESCA 2008 Final Result

2009-04-02T00:00:00.002+01:00

Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 160
David Martin bicycleworks.com 69
Derek Smith City of Edinburgh RC 65
Ross Crook Edinburgh RC 36
Olivier Del Corto Edinburgh RC 27
Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC 27
Sam Matthews Edinburgh Racers 27
Callum Skinner Edinburgh Racers 26
Nick Yeats Edinburgh RC 23
Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC 21
Nicky Hall City of Edinburgh RC 19
Charline Joiner City of Edinburgh RC 19
Sandy Wallace Sandy Wallace Cycles 16
Alisatair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 16
Evan Oliphant Plowman Craven RT 15
Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC 14
John Williams Edinburgh RC 14
Daisy Sherwood City of Edinburgh RC 14
Pete Jacques City of Edinburgh RC 13
Graham Barclay Team Leslie Bikes 13
Toby Sherwood City of Edinburgh RC 13
David Lines Pedalpower RT 11
Kyle Yates Edinburgh Racers 11
Kate Cullen Braveheartfund.com 10
Robert Wardell Sandy Wallace Cycles 8
Robert Kennedy Glasgow Nightingale CC 7
Ben McCullough Young Edinburgh RC 7
Greg Brown Glasgow Nightingale CC 7
Paul Newnham Edinburgh RC 6
Neil Laing Edinburgh RC 6
Scott McDiarmid Edinburgh RC 6
Alistair MacKintosh Musselburgh RCC 6
Magnus Davidson Square Wheels Cycles 6
Alison Chisholm Edinburgh RC 6
Rosie Yeats Edinburgh Racers 6
Tommy Banks Glasgow Wh 6
S McCrossan 0 6
Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC 5
Miguel Ciriza Edinburgh RC 5
Adam Stobbart Edinburgh Racers 5
Chantelle Meechan Edinburgh Racers 4
Kevin Barclay Pedalpower.org.uk 4
Jamie Bremner Discovery Junior CC 4
Greg Robertson Edinburgh RC 3
James McCallum Plowman Craven RT 3
Georges Avraam Edinburgh RC 2
Neil Smith Stirling Bike Club 2
Mark Colquhoun Glasgow Nightingale CC 2
Maddy Robinson Edinburgh RC 2
Fiona Walker Walkers Cycling Club 2
James McFadyen Musselburgh RCC 1
Victor Possee VC St Raphael 1
Brendan Milliken Pedalpower RT 1
Jenny Davis City of Edinburgh RC 1
Lewis Oliphant Equipe Velo Ecosse 1
Tom Worthington Glasgow Nightingale CC 1
Craig Owen Edinburgh Racers 1
Ben Muir Edinburgh Racers 1
Grant Ferguson Dooleys 1
Finlay Young Equipe Velo Ecosse 1
Dean Martin Equipe Velo Ecosse 1

Remembrance Day - Lest We Forget

2008-11-11T13:25:00.005Z

You know how it is, with spirit(s),
they just couldn't hold us
Brothers and sisters
The world you died for,
was all but a pack of lies
It had to fall down, and keep on falling
you gave us the world they promised you,
and in the morning
we are the flowering
we are the flowering youth

Extract from Berliners by Roy Harper

We can only hope that one day there will be no more wars and without hope we can never achieve, so be positive despite all the pain and loss in this world and be hopeful.

Cargo Bicycle in Amsterdam

2008-10-25T12:52:00.003+01:00

Cargo Bicycle in Amsterdam
Originally uploaded by rjt208

A cargo bike, you also get trike cargo bikes with two wheels at the front. I want one even if I have to ride it back from Copenhangen!

Power Monkey

2008-10-14T11:17:00.004+01:00

Powertraveller : Buy : powermonkey-eXplorer

A useful wee gadget that a couple of guys from the Audax email list are using when touring. In this case it was being used to recharge a

Edge 705 -

More info on the Power Monkey

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Save Meadowbank

2008-08-21T00:09:00.007+01:00

Chris Hoy has achieved what no other British sportsperson has, to win three Gold medals in the same Olympics. Where Chris learnt his craft was at Meadowbank Velodrome.

Yet Edinburgh City Council are planning on demolishing the stadium and selling off part of the land for residential development and to install a much reduced sports facility that does away with the velodrome and the five a side pitches both of which are popular and fully supported and well used.

Despite the velodrome not having a roof for all these years in a country known for it's "weather" it has produced National champions, Commonwealth Games medalists and Olympic medalists the pinnacle of whom is Chris Hoy.

Watch the video, sign the petition and ask your MSP what the Scottish government is going to do to support cycling in Scotland because without a track where are the future track champions going to come from?

Save Meadowbank Petition

Embedded Video

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A Song...

2008-08-12T13:57:00.008+01:00

Evo

My heart made glad today
By a man who gave some away
And he lives a life worth living
Down Bolivia way

With a joy you get from giving
And not from what your paid
The world needs men like Evo Morales
To show the rest of us the way

He likes football to be played with the feet, not the hands
He's using them to take back his own land

Well l had to laugh to day
About the fuss they made
Cos' Evo wore a jumper
When he met the King of Spain
Well he wouldn't have worn the uniform
Where the suit with the face hold sway
World leaders need men like Evo to lead them to lead us to a better day

He likes football to played with the feet, not the hands
And he's kicking the Empire's troopers out
Claiming back his land

Morality evolving what is in a name
When a problem needs it's solving
Do you have to play some game?

Send in men like Evo
Get it done today
The world needs men like Evo Morales
To show the rest of us the way

He likes football to be played with the feet, not the hands
All the world over people want their freedom
In their own land.

Written by Nick Harper - available from the album

Miracles For Beginners

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Festival Grand Prix - a soggy affair...

2008-08-11T09:23:00.003+01:00

What is going on with the weather, this August has been the soggiest I can remember? Which didn't help with the Festival Grand Prix. I showed up at 8:30am just as the organiser did but once in the velodrome and as the weather got steadily worse I thought there's no point getting the bike out this rain is going to last. After an hour of hanging about the organiser's had to give in and cancel that days racing.

The next day we got some races done but the Sprinters only made it to the semi finals as the rain had kicked in good and proper by 4 o'clock and that was that.

For myself I hung on fairly well considering I was the only C rider lobbed in with the B riders. I didn't get dropped and I didn't make any stoopid moves on the front and played it canny, maybe to canny as I think I could have got a few places higher if I had been a bit more ballsy. Having said that maybe I would've blown big time if I had got carried away.

DSC02482.JPG
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

8km Scratch - Result
1 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC 11.43.05
2 Miguel Ciriza Edinburgh RC
3 James Smith Discovery Junior CC
4 Matthew Hamilton Discovery Junior CC
5 Sam Matthews Edinburgh Racers
6 Charline Joiner City of Edinburgh RC

Unknown Distance - Result
1 Graeme Steen City of Edinburgh RC 7.12.64
2 James Smith Discovery Junior CC
3 Greg Brown Glasgow Nightingale
4 Miguel Ciriza Edinburgh RC
5 Charline Joiner City of Edinburgh RC
6 Matthew Hamilton Discovery Junior CC
7 Sam Matthews Edinburgh Racers
8 Andrew Leith Discovery Junior CC
9 Finlay Young Equipe Velo Ecosse
10 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC
11 Ben Muir Edinburgh Racers
12 Anselma Gallinet Gosforth RC

The new bike at the Scottish Track Championships

2008-07-22T10:26:00.009+01:00

The new bike
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

The new bike which I used for the 3k pursuit.

Veterans Pursuit
Qualification Results
Peter Ettles Forres CC 3.52.70
Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 3.53.23
Graham Barclay Team Leslie Bike Shop 3.53.95
Stephen McCaw thebicycleworks.com 3.59.99
Nick Yeats Edinburgh RC 4.00.82
Colin Mackenzie Edinburgh RC 4.06.87
Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC 4.16.58
Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC 4.23.90
Gordon Lawrie Clachnacuddin CC 4.48.29

Neil Laing posted three excellent write ups for each day of the Scottish Track Champs here

As he pointed out I managed a PB for both the Kilo and the 3K pursuit, so pretty chuffed with that. Although I think I could improve the 3k down to 4:10 but the kilo to make any improvement that is going to be down to practising my starts and working on leg speed.

Here's the Kilo results

Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 1.08.36
Ivor Reid Clachnacuddin CC 1.10.11
David Martin thebicycleworks.com 1.10.77
Kevin Stewart Discovery Juniors CC 1.11.32
Jamie Bremner Discovery Juniors CC 1.14.05
Ross Crook Edinburgh RC 1.15.20
Toby Sherwood City of Edinburgh RC 1.15.53
Graham Barclay Team Leslie Bike Shop 1.15.62
John Williams Edinburgh RC 1.16.73
Colin Mackenzie Edinburgh RC 1.17.25
Nick Yeats Edinburgh RC 1.17.54
Neil Laing Edinburgh RC 1.17.64
Dave Readle Edinburgh RC 1.18.80
Colin Crawford Edinburgh RC 1.20.52
Robert Kennedy Glasgow Nightingale 1.22.45
Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC 1.23.80

A couple of things I like about the new frame compared to the old one is the shorter wheelbase due in part to the frame design ie I think the stays are shorter but also the seat tube is more tapered in profile and has a recess for the wheel this combined with the carbon forks which are proper track forks ie no drilling for a brake and muchos tight clearance for the tyre as well as the forks being straight blades which again makes for a shorter wheelbase.

Phoebe the Movie

2008-07-19T17:02:00.004+01:00

Ale and I were messing about with our mobies and I made this little movie of Phoebe doing her thing.

New bike makes a difference...

2008-07-19T16:21:00.007+01:00

Track Frame that didn't work
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

Well after much nashing of teeth, phone calls etc. I finally collected my bike from Velo Ecosse on Thursday night and dropped it off at my Biddie In's flat for me to pick up the next day to use in the Scottish Champs kilo.

Once at the track which I was a bit later getting there than I would have liked I had a bit of a struggle fitting the rear wheel as there seemed to be a lot of lacquer on the chain side stay dropout which meant it would only go half way in. Having asked folks if anyone had a metal file I had to resort to using the edge of a pedal spanner to scrape off the laquer. It was still a bit of a tight fit but least I got the chain tension right and I was good to go.

Only problem, they had by this time closed the track for warming up! Gregor at Velo Ecosse had setup the bike from the my old bike setup and I had tried it in the shop and it seemed fine but I was still a bit nervous about riding the kilo not being absolutley sure I had the saddle and bars where I wanted them so I asked to use a set of rollers to see how it felt, baring in mind I have never ridden rollers before I promptly fell off twice, with visions of blowing out my rear tyre as I had seen some else do on rollers when they came off at a reasonable speed I decide to leave it and take my chances.

As it turned out it wasn't so bad I did notice the difference with the slightly bigger gear 50x15 instead of 49x15 but once I was rolling the gear felt fine and maybe I should go a bit bigger yet. It was a windy night but I was fairly lucky as there was only one point when I entered the back straight that I really noticed the wind.

As for the result I was last but I did knock seven seconds off my previous time. I still think I can do better, firstly my start which can still use a lot of improvement particularly remembering to breathe and also to use my entire body to pull on the bars and push on the pedals, also a bigger gear is doable and if I get used to starting with that it would also help once I've got it rolling and the final thing would be to change the stem to a Deda Newton Pista as that would get my position lower at the front.

Friday Results

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Track Bike update of the update...

2008-07-01T02:00:00.006+01:00

Nearly!!
Originally uploaded by Musicmum

Well it all went horribly wrong, after so much thinking about what bits n' pieces I wanted for the track bike when I finally got it all together, I thought, hmmm the clearance of the chainset and the chainstay were a bit ticht but thought it would be ok.

I took the bike down to the track on the Friday night before the Edinburgh Grand Prix and managed one lap round the track and had to stop as whenever I stood on the pedals or gave it any kind of effort I heard a click sound. When I stopped to check it out it turned out the crank was hitting the frame!

So I spent the rest of the evening sorting out my ESCA bike to use my Campag wheels at least. Weird thing happened with that to my Campag wheels had a 15 tooth sprocket as did my ESCA bike wheel had but the chain length was way to long when I fitted the Campag wheel as though my sprocket was a different diameter compared to the ESCA sprocket. I even tried swapping (with Neils help as the ESCA sprocket hadn't been changed in a long time) the sprockets around but still to long. None of us could understand it so I shortened the chain.

The actual Grand Prix went fine (the sprinters were very impressive) on the Saturday but come the Sunday my nice new Campag rear wheel had to be replaced with the ESCA one as I think I had when I fitted the tub to the wheel shifted the valve extension's rubber seal as the tub kept loosing pressure. As Bicycle Repairman was taking photos and handing out prizes I gave my wheel to him to sort out and hopefully I will get it at tomorrows Track League.

Velo Ecosse have sourced a different frame for me and hopefully this week I will get the bike back and all I will have to do is fit a chain to it and it will be ready for next week's Track League.

As for the Grand Prix meet the Spanish and Netherland riders were very impressive and there was a good bit of banter with them to. For me I struggled just to stay with the pace of the B riders in the scratch races and didn't do very well in the Devil as I was the second person pulled. One scratch race I even resorted to sprint for third last (I got it) and another Maddy I think it was did the same to me, she was convinced she got it but I think I just managed to hang on but hey I could be fooling myself!

I had quite a hard training ride with my pal Lynn yesterday (blooming strong headwind all the way back home) and my legs are still sore today so who knows how it will go at the Track tomorrow night.

Track Bike Update

2008-06-08T23:53:00.004+01:00

An update on the progress of my track bike. I now have pretty much got all the bits in my sweaty paws except for a pair aero bars but more about that in a bit.

Frame
I bought a Velo Ecosse frame (and forks) for £250, it's basically a Giant frame with a paint job in Velo Ecosse colours. Basically a very good price for a stiff and light frame. The forks are carbon fibre but are really designed for the road rather than track and as a result the wheel base is an inch longer compared to straight forks. Again my time trial bike has a shorter wheel base than this fork and frame combo so I am intending to replace the forks with Alpina Wing TT which will shorten the wheel base by at least an inch.

Wheels
Campag Pistas' 1kg each, carbon wheels would be half the weight but a) I can't afford em' plus b) these are my workaday Track League wheels so spending onything frae £600 to £1300 would be daft particularly considering how crap I am! I would like to get a rear carbon disc wheel such as the Corima if I can manage it before the European Masters in August.

Tyres
Conti 19mm Tempo. Ooops I meant to get Victoria Evos' but I made slitter o' ordering the tyres due to having had a swaley or two before ordering em' off the internet.

Bars and Stem
Deda Pista Oversize and Deda 31 Netwon stem. The bars I love, fantastic shape and depth, no chance of bashing my forearms on the bars due to the gorgeous curve at the top the bar. Only thing I'm regretting is the stem, I'm thinking I should have gone with the Deda 31 Newton Pista stem as the 31 Newton stem actually angles up compared to the top tube of the frame and as a result makes my pursuit position less aerodynamic than my time trial bike. I shall contact Ribble to see if I can do an exchange. One other minor quibble is that I have had to use a packer to suit the fork steerer diameter. I would have preferred to have a fork steerer that was the right size in the first place.

Chainset & bottom bracket
Campag Pista with a 50 teeth chain ring and a British Cycling (Canadian made) 51 teeth chain ring (for Manchester and maybe the pursuit at Meadowbank). Bottom bracket Campag Pista canny go wrong with that is my thinking. While an FSA chainset would be a lovely thing I can't afford it!

Chain
Izumi V (NJS certified) looks gorgeous but weighs a lot compared to some, but then snapping a chain is not an option as far as my Baw Bags are concerned, thank you very much!

Saddle and Pin
Selle Italia Filante saddle 180g, nabbed off my commuting bike as it looks the bizz. Seat Pin a Deda Magic Stick which came with the frame courtesy of Gregor at Velo Ecosse.

Pedals
Either a pair of old Look 225s' or if I can find the right hand pedal a pair of Look CAs which I inherited from my pal Battleaxe and are significantly lighter.

Handlebar Tape / Grips and Bar Plugs
Courtesy of Freshtripebikes.com I've ordered a two pairs of QBP Dimension Track Grips and Velox Bar plugs. Fitting the grips sounds like it maybe fun but hopefully the soapy water technique will get em' on.

ESCA 2008

2008-05-23T08:48:00.005+01:00

Callum Skinner-98.jpg
Originally uploaded by Edinburgh Racers

Well last nights racing was very impressive, maybe we are seeing Chris Hoy's replacement coming through from the junior ranks Callum Skinner only 15 years old was within one second of Chris Hoy's 500mtr record for Meadowbank track and he set a new Scottish age record and he was second in the kilo and finally he won the 10k scratch in a convincing manner attacking and getting a gap with two laps to go and holding off Bruce Croall at the line.

As for myself I had a terrible ride in the kilo, I'm pretty sure I was last with 1:30.6. I had been hoping for a 1:25 or even a 1:22 at best but I will have to get lots of practice in on my starts and generally improve my control on the bankings. If it's possible I did an even worse start than I did in the 4k pusuit and it only got worse from there, going far to high on the bankings and my legs giving out on the last lap. Just a mess from start to finish. The 10k scratch race wasn't much better, it started at a blistering pace and after 10 laps I was lapped so I climbed off to watch the fun as it turned out to be a fantastic race to watch.

Anyhoo here are the results for all the ESCA confined events.

Individual Champs with Omnium Winners and BAR

These are confined events for ESCA affiliated riders
ESCA Senior Pursuit Champion - Ross Crook (Edinburgh RC)
ESCA Senior Sprint Champion - Bruce Croall (City of Edinburgh RC)
ESCA Senior Kilometre TT Champion - Bruce Croall (City of Edinburgh)
ESCA Senior 10Km Scratch Champion - Callum Skinner (Edinburgh Racers)

Final standings in the ESCA Track B.A.R. Senior Men’s Competition are as follows:
1. Bruce Croall 17 points City of Edinburgh RC (2 champ wins )
2. Ross Crook 17 points Edinburgh RC (1 champ win)
3. Callum Skinner 16 points Edinburgh Racers
4. Alastair Taylor 10 points Musselburgh RCC
5. Olivio Del Corto 8 points Edinburgh RC
6. Colin Mackenzie 5 points Edinburgh RC
7. Peter Jacques 4 points City of Edinburgh RC

Final standings in the ESCA Womans Track Omnium Competition are as follows:
1. Daisy Sherwood 18 points City of Edinburgh RC
2. Jenny Davis 11 points City of Edinburgh RC
3. Maddy Robinson 9 points Edinburgh RC
4. Charline Joiner 9 points City of Edinburgh RC
5. Ali Chisholm 9 points Edinburgh RC
6. Emma McAlpine 3 points Edinburgh Racers

Junior and Youth Omniums

Junior Ben McCulloch Young 12 points Edinburgh RC
Callum Watson 5 Sprint Unattached

Youth A Boys Sam Matthews 6 points Edinburgh Racers
Ben Muir 6 points Edinburgh Racers
Youth A Girls Emma McAlpine 11 points Edinburgh Racers

Youth B Alex Webb 12 points Edinburgh RC
Cameron Balfour 5 points Peebles CC
Angus Gilles 4 points Peebles CC
Craig Owen 3 points Edinburgh Racers

Youth C Kate McCulloch Young 8 points Edinburgh Racers

Youth D Stuart Balfour 6 points Sprint Peebles CC
Morven Risk 5 points Sprint Edinburgh Racers

Senior Men 4km pursuit.
1 Arthur Doyle Dooleys CRT 4.31.12
2 David Martin Bicycleworks.com caught
3 Ross Crook Edinburgh RC 4.28.60 < ESCA Champion >
4 Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC caught
5 Oliver Del Corto Edinburgh RC 5.25.11
6 Colin MacKenzie Edinburgh RC 5.33.07
7 Neil Laing Edinburgh RC 5.36.48
8 John Williams Edinburgh RC 5.37.80
9 Andy Laing Musselburgh RCC 5.38.75
10 Eric Easton Edinburgh RC 5.41.06
11 Graeme Mair Edinburgh RC 5.49.46
12 Alistair MacKintosh Musselburgh RCC 5.50.30
13 James MacFadyen Musselburgh RCC 5.51.09

Senior Men 1000m Time Trial
1. Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC 1.07.32
2. Callum Skinner Edinburgh Racers 1.11.35
3. David Martin Bicycle Works 1.13.28
4. Ross Crook Edinburgh RC 1.15.40
5. Alastair Taylor Musselburgh RCC 1.16.09
6. Colin Mackenzie Edinburgh RC 1.16.23
7. Oli Del Corto Edinburgh RC 1.16.34
8. John Williams Edinburgh RC 1.17.34

My time including splits

16.84
27.81
38.30
48.67
59.09
1.09.20
1.19.75
1.30.42

Senior Men 10Km Scratch Race
1. Callum Skinner Edinburgh Racers
2. Bruce Croall City of Edinburgh RC
3. Ross Crook Edinburgh RC
4. Oli Del Corto Edinburgh RC
5. David Martin Bicycle Works
6. Rab Wardell Sandy Wallace Cycles
7. Nick Yeats Edinburgh RC

Women’s 500m Time Trial
1. Daisy Sherwood City of Edinburgh RC
2. Jenny Davis City of Edinburgh RC
3. Ali Chisholm Edinburgh RC
4. Maddy Robinson Edinburgh RC
5. Emma McAlpine Edinburgh Racers

Junior 1000m Time Trial
Ben McCulloch Young Edinburgh RC

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2008-05-05T12:44:00.012+01:00

Yesterday the 4th of May after 33 hours of slog at 11:03am my daughter Eilidh gave birth to a baby girl (see below). She is called Phoebe and weighs 8lbs 1 and a half ounces. Like her mother Phoebe likes sleeping... a lot.

Phoebe

Eilidh and Phoebe are fine, Eilidh needed no stitches but has some bruising where a Doctor tried to get a line in for an epidural which they didn't as it turned out actually need as the baby decided to move to a better location rather than being spine to spine which was causing Eilidh a lot of pain.

They will be both getting home today, which will be a great relief to Eilidh as she can't stand the food and she can't sleep as she keeps thinking that someone will take the baby!

My contribution to the entire effort was to feed Greg (Eilidh's other half) by arranging for an Indian Restaurant to deliver a curry to the maternity Unit at 11:00pm. Feed Eilidh's cat at 7:00am Sunday morning, of which the cat eat two mouthfuls and then vamussed outside to go kill a bird.
Relay text messages through the night from the delivery room being sent by Eilidh's Mum to me to then relay onto her brother and sister, thereby keeping Kate awake as I ran out of money on my pay as you go phone and so had to climb out of bed start up my computer top up via the internet climb back into bed and continue receiving and sending txts.
And finally bring a Red Cross food parcel to Eilidh as the food is horrible in the hospital.

Useless facts about Phoebe's name

Phoebe is one of Saturn's moons
Cassini Fly-by

Phoebe is a Titan Godess whose name is associated with the Greek words phoibos, "bright" or "radiant," phoibaô "to purify" and phoibazô "to give prophesy."

Phoebe Titan Goddess

Oh yeah Phoebe was apparently a minor character in some television programme but we don't want to talk about that.

Final piece of trivia our Phoebe is obviously a Jedi as she was born on May the Fourth (be with you)

Humph

2008-04-28T01:31:00.002+01:00

Gonna miss such a lovely guy as Humphrey Lyttelton, at the moment it seems impossible for anyone to replace him as the Chairman of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

I loved his intros and links in the programme, one of which made me rush around scrabbling for a pen and paper just to draw the image he had just put in my head. I will scan my cartoon when I get my scanner functioning again and post it here.

Here's a classic Samantha (the fictitious score keeper) comment....

Samantha spent hours in the gramaphone archive selecting the discs. You know, she gets fed up with the comments about the way she 'checks the seven inchers' or 'twists the knob'. She says she tries to take no notice of the critics but it isn't easy to ignore her knockers.

Snowy April Showers

2008-04-07T18:17:00.008+01:00

DSC02165.JPG
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

Despite the snow I headed out for a ride from Edinburgh out to Carnwath to Penicuik back to Edinburgh on my fixed wheel commuting and general all purpose bike, no gears simple, I luv the thing despite it weighing a ton.

St John Street Cycles frame made from Tange cromo (but feels like cast iron) double butted tubes

Mavic Open Pros DT plain gauge spokes on a On-One flip flop hub to the rear and a SON Dynamo hub to the front. Conti Super Sport 700x23c
ITM stem, Aheadset and ITM bars.

Campag Chorus Chainset which looks a bit weird on a fixee but it was going spare in my box of bits. 42x16 which I think equates to a 68-69 inch gear with which I can get up pretty much anything ok well I'm not sure I would make it up Tala but I would give it a go :)

oh and finally a Blackburn rack with top bag that has optional small panniers built in.

Fat git on a Bike

2008-04-06T11:48:00.015+01:00

DSC02132.JPG
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

Progress on the track front was made this weekend. I will be picking up a Velo Ecosse track frame in two weeks time and I've been allocated one of the E.S.C.A. track bikes but I've still to sort out the paperwork and pay the fees for the hire of the bike and race entries for the Track League.

Graham the coach, who lives and breathes the track helped me out with finding a bike the right size and got me to try riding on the black and red lines as well trying to vary my speed.

World Track Cycling Championships 2008
Originally uploaded by GuySwarbrick

Having done all that I started to have a go at getting out of the saddle when approaching the banking like Shanaze demonstrated so well at the World Championships this year. I was starting to get used to it but halfway round one bend I felt the back wheel getting a tad "light" and thought "uh ooh I could loose it" so promptly stuck my bum back in the saddle to make sure I didn't slide down the banking and make a fool of myself.

I'm going to be doing a Friday and Saturday session with Graham in two weeks time assuming the weather is dry as the track gets slippy even with a bit of North Sea harr.

From the photos Kate took my position on the bike looks rubbish but I have like all good cyclists lots of excuses,

Firstly my helmet is really intended for trail riding and it has a brim on it that blocked my view

Secondly I broke my collar bone last year and my arm muscles aren't what they were to allow me to stay in a tucked position with my arms bent to give me a nice flat back.

Thirdly it was Kate's fault cos she didn't take any photos of me when I did manage to bend my arms

And finally my beer gut was getting in the way!

Fuzzy Albums

2008-03-30T14:11:00.007+01:00

Here's a list of albums that had a big impact on me, a sort of Desert Island discs list. Most of them are from when I first really got into music. I had originally tried to post it on Steve Lawson's blog but I was defeated by the captcha thingy. Do have a read of Steve's interesting piece here

Pink Floyd - Meddle, Relics and of course Darkside of the Moon
Deep Purple - Machinehead
Don Maclean - American Pie
Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
Yes - Yes Album, Close to the Edge, Fragile and Yes Songs
Genesis - Selling England by the Pound, Foxtrot
Rush - 2112
Jethro Tull - Stand Up
Johnny Winters - Nothing But the Blues
Muddy Waters - Hard Again
Moody Blues - On the Threshold of a Dream
David Bowie - Alladin Sane, Honky Dory & Low
Tangerine Dream - Ricochet & Rubycon
Roxy Music - Roxy Music & Country Life
John Martyn - One World, Soild Air
10cc - How Dare You
Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman
Bonzo Dog Band - Beast of the Bonzos
Elton John - Don't Shoot Me I'm only the Piano Player, Tumbleweed Connection, 17-11-70, Madman Across the Water and finally Elton John
Roy Harper - Death or Glory, Born in Captivity, HQ, In Between Every Line, Folkjokeopus, Sophisticated Beggar, Bullinamingvase and Stormcock

and from my Dad's record collection when I was to young to buy my own records.

Herb Albert and his Tjuna Brass Band
Frankie Laine
Lena Horne
Billie Holiday
Sarah Vaughan
Chris Barber
Lonnie Donnigan

Sadly all of my Dad's records were left on a storage heater when we had moved into a new house and we found in the morning a melted mess wrapped around the heater!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

In Pursuit - Of another bike?

2008-03-28T14:15:00.058Z

Dolan track bike
Originally uploaded by NicePics

Last year at a friends wedding I got a bit drunk and was chatting away with a friend who had recently got a bit more serious about her cycling and she was asking various questions about training and stuff. This got me onto the fact that she and I could have a crack at the Scottish 12 Hour Mixed Tandem record (that will be the beer kicking in there), all of which she was intrigued by the idea of.

As it is she lives in the Borders and I spend half my time in Fife and the rest in Edinburgh so meeting up to get some miles in hasn't happened and we haven't talked about it since. But it did get me thinking about having a crack at racing again, this has now jelled into a definite plan all as a result of the amazing performances over the last three days at the World Track Championships.

I have never raced on the track, I've ridden at Meadowbank velodrome for a couple of hours one evening but there was just me and my biddy in on the track so not exactly the cut n' thrust of a Madison or Points race. The other thing that motivated me was that the local council are planning to demolish the velodrome
so I wanted to race on the same track that has been Chris Hoy's and Craig Mclean's home track that started their amazing careers before it wasn't there any more.

All of which has led to this noddling about putting together a bike for the 4000m Pursuit.

I already have a Time Trial bike, a Road/Audax bike, a commuting bike with gears, a commuting fixee bike (ie no gears), a xc bike, a touring bike, a tandem and finally a tricycle.

As you can tell from the prices I started with what I liked the look of and also how little it weighed and in the case of the frame which is the heart of the bike, how strong and stiff it was but also how good it looked cos' I'm a sucker for a beautiful piece of workmanship and design. All the rest of the components have to do the job but mostly not weigh a lot. Having said all of that I don't have much dosh to do this so I will be scrounging around for whatever I can get my hands on.

The frame I think I have sussed and while the lovely carbon madness I have listed below is all fantastic stuff it all costs an arm and a leg so I'm hoping Velo Ecosse who sponsor some track riders and supply them with their branded frames may have something suitable at not to great a cost.

My biggest headache is going to be, getting a rear disc wheel, which generally don't come cheap. The front wheel I want is a deep section rim with as few spokes as possible, maybe something like this Zipp
or these Campag wheels
But I'm hoping Planet X may have something more affordable.
Here then is the list of possible components and options to build yet another bike... after all you can never have to many bikes :).

Tyres
Continental Tempo Tubular 2008 - Conti's
Weighing 200g

but lighter still are....
Vittoria Pista Evo-CS Tubular
which come in at 135g.....hmmm

Saddle
fizik Arione K:1 - 149 grams, £190 (jings!)
San Marco Aspide (Titanium) Saddle

Chain
KMC K810
KMC Z610HX £8.00

IZUMI Model V

Sprocket
Shimano Dura Ace
On-One

Bars
Cinnelli - Bat Bar, 570g, £275 (ouch!)
Profile - CarbonX, 728grams, £224 (not much better)
ITM
Profile - Profile T2 bars £31ish 245g plus or from Total cycling
Profile Aero clip-ons The Profiles togewther come to 745g so not bad weight wise compared to the more pricey stuff above.
FSA Carbon Pro Clip On plus FSA Carbon Base Bar 680g

Rear Wheel
Planet X
HED
Campag - Campagnolo Ghibli Disc wheel - 2008 A snip at £1300
Zipp
Corima Disc

Front Wheel
Planet X 50mm Carbon £200
FF Wheels
Campag Pista Wheels

Chainset
Campag Pista Chainset

Frame
Look
Teschner - Track Pro
Giant
Dolan - Pursuit
Velo Ecosse
BMC- Track Machine TRC 01
Corima - VIF Frame

Alves Framesets. Charlie Ralph (see above photo) has built three gorgeous bikes for me in the past can I afford another one?

Oh and final thing I will need is one of these...

I shall keep coming back to this post and updating the links and prices as I get more info.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Recycling - Who is it good for ?

2008-03-23T16:43:00.001Z

Rubbish Collection
Originally uploaded by MacGBeing

Is it just me but is recycling a scam?

The local councils want us to recycle but only to produce it on their terms. So we have to use valuable resources such as our time and also the planet's water to clean containers, can and bottles before they will accept the material. We are in effect doing their work for them, so why shouldn't we be reimbursed?

Shouldn't the Council's be reducing our Council Tax based on the percentage of recycled material from our rubbish, to make it worth our while to recycle? Rather than making do with a wooly feeling that I might be doing some good for the planet?

What Ukulele's were made for...

2008-02-10T09:07:00.004Z

I saw on Jools Holland's "Later" show, Joe Brown and the Bruvvers play "I'll See You in my Dreams" which apparently he also played at the end of the George Harrison tribute gig.

Jools Holland also tells a lovely story about how George Harrison made Jools and Bob Dylan watch George Formby films one Sunday afternoon but you will need to buy the book to read that.

Here's the tab for "I'll See You in my Dreams"
http://www.alligatorboogaloo.com/uke/tabs/050922-3.html

The Last 150,000 years

2007-10-30T13:17:00.000Z

I am currently listening to Roy Harper's remastered Stormcock album which has not disappointed audio wise and the new "Book" style album is a delight but the point of this post is to point any passers by who maybe interested to Roy's Blog where he talks about the remastering of Stormcock but also about what those times were like when he recorded the album.

So here's the link Roy's Blog on Myspace

Stuart Whitlie

2007-10-11T11:17:00.009+01:00

Stuart Whitlie
Originally uploaded by gaitor92

Came across this photo and it took me back to my racing days.

The first time I noted Stuart was at the Scottish National Hill Climb in Falkland when he passed me taking two minutes out of me to win the event in 7 minutes.

Years later we met again but on TNT H3 and over a pint we were trying to work out which races we may both have been in. Turned out we had both ridden the SCU National 100 mile time trial.

Now that day Stuart had a support team who were handing up food and drinks and generally keeping him motivated, but for the last 10 miles of the race he couldn't catch "the boy on the trike" and his team afterwards ripped it out of him that he didn't manage to catch the trike. Well I was the guy on the trike but what Stuart didn't know was that I was asleep!

The previous day I was supposed to collect my completed brand new trike frame but when I arrived at Charlie Ralph's he hadn't quite finished it. So we worked on into the night completeing the frame, painting it with primer and then fitting all the components. By the time we had finished and travelled from Elgin upto Dingwall it was 5:00am and the race started at 6:00am. As a result I was knackered and after 90 miles of riding what was quite tough roads in some places I was nodding off but since I was riding a trike i didn't fall off just kept going albeit in a straight line on a twisting country road!!!

edit Jan 2011
My kids have heard all my stories bizzillions of times and now it seems I am repeating myself on the interwebs as I had forgotten that I had written about this before so if you want the full gory details version head over here

Gulabin Lodge

2007-10-02T20:30:00.000+01:00

Gulabin Lodge, Spittal of Glenshee,
by Blairgowrie, Perth PH10 7QE

Hopefully the weather will stay like it has this weekend and we can have a good old nose around for the Hash we are haring the following week. A very scenic part of the world hopefully I might get some good photos.

Choclate Trufle Cake.JPG

2007-09-12T15:38:00.001+01:00

Choclate Trufle Cake.JPG
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

Cake!

Rhediad Dydd Gwyl Dewi - Ffrynt

2007-08-18T20:58:00.001+01:00

Rhediad Dydd Gwyl Dewi - Ffrynt
Originally uploaded by Blewyn

Rummaging around on Flickr we spotted one of Madcows T Shirts well we think it is but is it?

Galaxy Zoo

2007-08-17T13:54:00.000+01:00

The recent episode of the Sky at Night did a feature on a website called Galaxy Zoo which is trying to identify millions of galaxies to catorgrise them. The human brain is much better at this task than a computer and a computer would discard the weird and the wonderful galaxies that are out there.

Galaxy Zoo trains you to recognise the common Galaxy types and after a few practices you are let loose on the real stuff. To start with I was a bit nervous as I found you can't go back and change your mind but having read some of the FAQs and tutorials it turns out every image is reviewed twenty times and so they take the statistical average.

Here's one that confused me, I thought it was a Spiral with an arm twisting away in a different plane but I'm assured it's in fact a Merger ie two galaxies merging.

Opera House

2007-08-15T12:07:00.001+01:00

Opera House
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

Kinda nice, I've just been informed by Schmap that they have shortlisted this photo of the Copenhagen Opera House.

This shot and one other one, of the others that I took that evening I liked but this one had the sun reflecting in the water whereas the other one doesn't but has a nice blue night sky.

I will find out in a while if it actually used

ouch-1.JPG

2007-08-08T15:25:00.001+01:00

ouch-1.JPG
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3

Our friendly cycle courier was very proud of his new invention of a two gear fixed wheel bike that he has just completed and so this morning he asked for me (as I commute on a fixie and have shown interest in his bike in the past) and got me to ride his new creation which gives you a top gear of 52 x 16 and low gear of 39 x 16 ideal for hilly old Edinburgh.

Downside was that the ancient Campag Gran Compe friction gear lever slipped while I was standing on the pedals cranking up the speed and it duly slipped me into "neutral" ie no gear at all and I hit the deck the results of which you can see below!

Road rash on hip and knee, cut elbow and large bump on head, that'll learn me!!!!

Or more likely it won't!

Roy Harper - Freshman Guitar

2007-08-07T19:34:00.001+01:00

IMG_0600
Originally uploaded by mistlethrush

This photo taken at De'barras in Clonakilty this summer was the only picture I had come across at one of the gigs in Roy's last tour till he gets writing some new material for a new CD... (so it could be a while before see Roy live again) that possibly showed something that identified the make of the guitar he was playing.

At an earlier gig in the tour that I was at in Glasgow, Roy said that a local guitar maker had given him a new guitar that very day and he was going to do something that he had never done in his career before and that was play a new guitar at a gig without having tried it out first!

With Mistlethrush/Paul's photo I tried everything I could think of to use in Photoshop to extract some hint as to the name on the label but just couldn't suss enough of it out. If only real life was like CSI where you can invent pixels where there aren't any :)

What I came up with is

Fres•ma...

So I took a stab in the dark and had a google for Freshman guitars (which I had never heard of) and came up with these links....

Freshman Guitars

Freshman Guitars Wiki

It turns out Freshman Guitars are based in East Kilbride not far from Glasgow. Roy is listed on the Wikipedia page as one the artists who uses their guitars but I'm having trouble getting Freshman's webpage listing the artists who have their guitars to load (I suspect it will only work on a PC) so I can't confirm that Roy has a Freshman but I think it's a pretty good bet.

So thanks to Paul I think we have managed to solve the conundrum that has been bugging me since that Glasgow gig.

Alan Johnston freed

2007-07-04T02:09:00.000+01:00

Fantastic news Alan has been freed by his captors to the custody of Hamas. Just heard this from the BBC World Service.

He is in good health, his realease was negotiated by Hamas but no details of how his captors were persuaded to release him and no details of when he will return to the UK as yet.

24/7 All the 7 Stanes

2007-06-18T16:26:00.000+01:00

All the 7 Stanes and roads in between in 17 and a half hours.In Glentrool the day started off damp/humid and cloudy perfect for the midges (what is the point of midges, they are just unneccesary if you ask me?). After the first few stages we were in second place about 15 mins behind the previous record holders "The Insomniacs" from Tynseside. As the day went on the rain started to get more persistent with it becoming torrential in the early evening. For the mountain bike sections this meant we had to contend with very slippy tree roots and gungy mud for the road sections with "delicate" time trial bikes with their 19mm tyres pumped up to 120psi we had to be careful on the corners and decsents as it was all to easy slip n' slide about. As it became torrential all kinds of rubbish was being washed onto the roads which by this time you couldn't see the surface proper due to a 1/4 of water washing over the road making it very difficult to spot potholes etc. Have to say the car drivers were very patient with us as we had to ride in the middle of the lane to avoid punctures or crashing but they gave us plenty of room and no hassle.

In the evening we had pretty much maintained the time gap behind the leaders and in fact increased our lead over the third team (The Polis) and fourth team (Galloway Mountain Rescue) to more than half an hour. Approaching the longer road sections from Ae to Newcasleton to Glentress the weather got worse making it difficult to keep up the speed and stay safe ie rubberside down.

Nonetheless my teammate Kev road a storming ride over some of the toughest hills of the event from Langholm to Newcastleton and we were still in contention. At Newcastleton we had estimated that it would take maybe an hour and 15 to ride the red route but both the Insomniacs rider and our rider were well overdue which had us worried that they had an accident but as it turned out the Insomiacs rider had lost the route and rode far to far up the hill until he realised his mistake while our rider Mick, his lights had failed possibly due to water getting into the electronics due to all the rain and had had to ride down very gingerly in the dark. So when Mick arrived first we were really surprised and it was very exciting as we were now in the lead albeit a small one of 5-10 mins or so.

We aren't sure but we think the Insomiacs decided to put there strongest rider out at this stage to make sure they got the lead back again rather than save him for the finish at Glentress . As I was our teams weakest rider I only held the lead for about an hour when he caught and passed me as I started up the climb to the pass to take me over to Hawick.

This section from Newcaselton to Hawick and the previous one had two roads closed due to landslides and a river bursting it's banks but as it was the fastest way to get to Hawick, myself and my team mate just had to press on and manage as best we could. As I was using a dynamo front light and I was climbing slowly due to being unfit, cold and knackered, what I thought were just some rocks lying on the road were in fact a small landslide that seemed to have a small river running through it! Needless to say I fell in to the freezing cold water! This happened a second time further up the hill. Once I reached the top it was covered in cloud and so I couldn't even get the benefit of going downhill fast as I could only see about two of the white dashes of the road markings ahead of me as my lights just bounced back at me off the fog. By the time I reached Hawick I was soaking wet and cold and 20 minutes down on the Insomniacs Team.

Once in Hawick I handed over for what was the hardest road section with a lot more climbing to get to Glentress. We arrived in Glentree 14 minutes behind and we said to Kev who was going to ride this final mountain bike section just to take it easy as it was very unlikely he could take 15 minutes out of them to win. So we settled down in the van trying to keep warm and waited. Sure enough Insomniacs rider came in first but what blew us away was that Kev came in 4 minutes behind him! Kev had blasted round the red route determined to catch the Insomniac rider despite what we had agreed! A magic finish to a mad 17 and a half hours of team relay cycling.video footage of the 7 Stanes here

Fav Mac app - Quicksilver

2007-06-12T02:21:00.000+01:00

I've been using Quicksilver for quite a while and now I can't live with out it. Most folks get the hang of using it to luanch apps and maybe even searching for contacts in their Address App but to get even more out of Quicksilver here's a good wee Beginner's Guide Tutorial...

Quicksilver tutorial

And here is a page with links to more advanced uses of QS....

Quicksilver more advanced tutorials

About a Bear

2007-06-09T09:06:00.000+01:00

I heard this poem a while a go on good old Radio 4 and I finally remembered to see if the Beeb had posted it on there web-site which bless em' they did. The programme Saturday Live have a resident poet and he writes poems based on the programmes contents and reads them out while the programme progresses .

They had the woman on that had together with her husband looked after Hercules the bear and she talked about the bear and how he was very careful around the house and how good he was with children. In particular a blind girl who had "seen" him at a performance and had written and asked if she could met the bear in person. This was duly arranged and the girl's first response when she met the bear was to reach out touch his head and give him a big hug, the bear just knew that this was a kid and not time for a wrestle as he did with owner, Hercules was really gentle and patient with her.

The poem written by Matt Harvey is posted here... About a Bear

O'wer the Edge

2007-05-11T10:18:00.000+01:00

0.0 A701 North to Moffat
1.0 Roundabout
3.4 Right onto 708 towards Selkirk
4.0 Right onto Old Carlisle South towards Boreland
5.3 Bear Left towards Wamphray
12.5 Keep Left towards Wamphray
14.2 Cross bridge and immediately turn Left towards Boreland
14.5 Straight
15.5 Fork Right towards Boreland
16 Left towards Boreland
22 Left at end onto B723 East towards Eskdalemuir
35 Left at end onto B709 North towards Ettrick
38km Right into CONTROL
Kangyu Samye Ling Tibetan Center car park (38km)

0.0 Right out of control B709 North continue towards Ettrick
0.9 Cross river
3.0 Davington
4.3 Cross river
13.8 Glenkerry
17.9 Cross river and Bear Right in Ettrick
22.5 In Tushielaw, Right turn onto B711 East towards Hawick
27.0 Buccleuch
35.0 Ardmore Loch
38.5 Bear Left
39.7 At Roberton town sign, immed. Right towards Borthwick Water
42.2 CONTROL at roadside

0.0 Retrace to B711
2.6 Left turn onto B711 East towards Tushielaw
3.4 Right turn towards Ashkirk
6.0 Pass Borthwickshiels turn off
7.1 Bear left
11.8 Turn right towards Ashkirk
14.6 At end, turn Left onto A7 North towards Selkirk
15.2 Right turn onto B6400
15.3 CONTROL St. Josephs Hall

0.0 Exit back to A7
0.1 Right turn onto A7 North towards Selkirk
7.8 In Selkirk, straight onto A707 “W Port”, leaving A7
8.0 Bear Right, A707 becomes “The Green”
8.2 Bear Right, A707 becomes “Heatherlie Terrace”
8.4 Left turn onto B7009 “Ettrick Road”
12.2 Bear left staying on B7009
19.0 Cross river in Ettrickbridge
20.1 Right turn, no signpost, in Kirkhope
CHECK POINT Continue up hill
25.5 Cross river, at end, Left turn onto A708 west towards Moffat
32.1 Cross B709
36.7 St. Mary’s Loch
63.6 At signpost “Mofat 1.5”, Left turn (fork)
64.0 Cross river
64.1 Left turn
65.3 Left turn
68.7 Poldean
71.7 Bear Right at fork towards Newton
72.7 Right turn to cross railway
73.5 Cross river
74.2 Newton
79.1 Straight
79.2 At end Right turn south towards Lockerbie
T-juction???
83.6 Right turn towards Millhousebridge
85.1 Bear right in Millhousebridge towards Lochmaben
85.2 Cross river
85.3 Left turn towards Lochmaben
86.9 Left turn onto B7020 towards Lochmaben
89.7 Merge A709 in Lochmaben
CONTROL Village Fayre Tea Shop

0.0 A709 towards Dumfries, “Bruce St”
1.2 Right turn towards Shieldhill
6.5 Bear Right and then sharp Right turn towards Parkgate
6.8 Left turn
9.6 Right turn onto A701 North (not signed)
10.2 1st Left turn towards Ae
14.2 Ae Village, continue towards Loch Ettrick
20.5 At end, Left trun towards Closeburn
23.6 Bear Left
26.0 At end, turn Right towards Closeburn
27.0 At end, turn Right A76 North
28.0 Straight through Closeburn
30.5 Left turn onto B731 towards Penpoint
32.4 At end, Left turn onto A702 Went towards Moniaive
32.5 Cross river
32.9 Right turn North, no sign
36.7 Fork Left (Red road!?), to car park, courtyard
CONTROL Rangers Office

0.0 Leave yard left, exit by Drumlanrig Forrest Road
2.3 At end, Left turn, no sign
7.6 Right turn (in Penpont) onto A702 towards West Moniaive
10.6 Cross river
17.6 Left turn over river into Moniaive
17.7 Left turn to stay on A702 (Chapen St)
37.9 At end (fountain?) Right turn onto A713 North towards Ayr
39.1 At end, Left turn onto A762 towards Glenlee
40.9 Right turn to Glenlee
41.2 Left turn
47.0 At end, Right turn onto A712, no sign
49.0 Chateringshaws Loch
50.4 Cross river
67.5 Right turn onto B7079 (New Galloway Road) to Newton Stewart
68.9 Right turn onto Fairway Drive before Creebridge House Hotel
30m CONTROL Sunny Brae Cottage

0.0 Back out East on B7079 (New Galloway Road) to A712
1.5 Left turn onto A712 East
18.6 Cross river, Chateringshaws Loch
27.2 Straight at New Galloway cross roads towards Crocketford
30.5 Cross A713
44.0 Corsock
45.0 Cross river
53.5 At end (Crocketford) Left turn onto A75 twards Dumfries
61.1 Straight at r’bout, begin dual carriageway
65.3 Garroch r’bout
66.0 R’bout (A780)
68.0 Right at R’bout (4th exit) onto A76, Glasgow Road towards Dumfries
68.3 Right turn (mini r’bout?) into Tesco Extra
68.4 CONTROL (Tesco Customer Services?)

0.0 Back out to Glasgow Road
0.1 Left turn (mini r’bout?) onto A76, Glasgow Road North
0.4 Right turn at R’bout (4th exit) onto A75 towards Carlisle
2.8 Left at r’bout onto A701 North towards Edinburgh
5.3 Locharbrigs
12.6 Cross Water of Ae
14.4 Parkgate
17.8 Blackacre
21.8 Cross river, St. Ann’s
31.0 FINISH

Gulf Daily News - April 16th 2004

2007-05-06T16:14:00.001+01:00

Gulf Daily News - April 16th 2004
Originally uploaded by Knightrider.

For Malcolm

To access Knightrider's Photo Set of Bahrain click on the link below
Knightriders Bahrain Photos

If you click the photo above it only shows that picture it doesn't show all the other Bahrain photos. To view Knightrider's Profile click on his name in the credits for the photo.

Hazy Days

2007-04-16T17:44:00.001+01:00

Just came back from a weekend in Arran. Living up a hill with no TV or radio for three days put me in "News Starvation mode". I listen to Radio 4's Today programme every morning and usually pick up the News at Midnight plus Today in Parliament to finish the day off.

Even the "Local Shop" didn't sell papers on a Sunday as their shop doesn't stay open all year so they aren't allowed to sell Sunday papers. Weird but apparently it's not down to the shop owner it's someone else just not sure who whether it's the local authority, newspaper companies or who.

The News when I finally caught up with it was not good as it sounds as if Alan Johnston may have been executed but this is still to be confirmed. All of which just added to my weird feeling of isolation from the world.

Winchester Motorway Services

2007-04-05T11:21:00.000+01:00

I picked this up from the Audax UK e-mail list. It was in response to chap who wanted to know if there was a better way to get into the Winchester Motorway Services as he had found it was challenging!

No experience of these services, but here is an extract from the route sheet for last year's "Invicta 400: The Grassy Knoll Experience..." by well-known
comedian Mr M Hummerstone:

"L at unlikely dirt track Cont for 0.75km and skid to halt in mud
Dismount and sit in mud to study route card as you think you have made a
mistake.
After 1.8 minutes, realise that you are on route
After 2 minutes, realise you are sitting on a stinging nettle.
R over stile with an 'oh well' attitude.
Untangle shorts from pedal. Scratch head and ar5e for 1 minute working out how the hell you get to the services
Ascend slippery muddy path
Pick yourself up 5 times
Untangle shorts from pedal
After 2 minutes emerge through shrubs like some sort of motorway services pervert covered in bramble cuts.
Leave bike outside unlocked and unattended - trusting in human nature
Do battle with a coach-load of pensioners to get to the counter of the services cafe
Blanch at the cost of a pastry and coffee
Grudgingly pick up receipt as proof of attendance
Leave discreetly hoping nobody notices the huge puddle on the floor
'Borrow' spoon just in case your Hamsterskins puncture again
Retrace route to dirt track falling on your ar5e as you descend the slippery muddy path"

To which well-known teller-of-porkies-where-Scenery-is-concerned[1] Mr P Chadwick of this Parish retorted:

"Now imagine doing that at in the pitch dark at 2 am in South Yorkshire, with added massive ruts and an inability to stay awake and you have the highlight of our Easter Arrow".

The above performance being due to the fact that the entrance road is technically part of the M20, a technicality studiously ignored on the way out by anyone with a degree of common sense :-) I am pleased to note that this year's edition does not visit Maidstone Services.

1 - Mr Chadwick's definition of "flat" is accompanied, in The Audax Illustrated Dictionary, by a picture of Annapurna.

The only snow in Dunfie in 2006

2007-03-28T14:14:00.001+01:00

_5A_0072.jpg
Originally uploaded by fuzzytnth3.

Last year 2006 we only had a day of snow which mostly melted away within a day or so. This year we had nowt, nadda, zilch! Is this global warming, Sun activity or just a warm trend in the weather? Maybe it's the something to do with memory, as Summers were always longer and hotter when I was a kid and conversely winters were colder and snowier.

Funnily with the last few winters being so mild half the folks I work with are complaining how cold it is! They come in all wrapped up in scarfs and heavy coatds. Some of them even keep there gloves on while working, while I am sweating with the ridiculous amount of heat that is being pumped out of the wall heaters and computers and such. Quite often I can't take it and have to stand in the street just to cool down to make it bearable.

What are these peoples houses like, heated to 25 degrees C or worse? How much are their fuel bills. It's crazy if you ask me, which you didn't!

Long routes and Hills

2007-03-27T14:58:00.000+01:00

I was asked for some suggestions for long hilly routes by way of preparation for doing Tour Etape. I haven't got all the details to hand so I will be coming back and adding missing info

Route 1
I have posted on the ERC web-site a route that is based on two of my favourite training routes. Here is the link....

ERC Routes

A variation to the route above, albeit it would make it longer, would be to head out via Thornhil to Aberfoyle and do the climb up Duke's Pass (part of the Tour of the Trossachs hilly time trial) and then rejoin the route west of Callander and then head to Lochearn.

Route 2

Another route would be to ride out from Stirling to Loch Lomond via Buchlyvie then Balloch and then head North to Tarbet. Bear left out of Tarbet and start climbing! As you leave Tarbet follow the signs for Crianlarich (ie bear right) and then start the climb proper of Rest and be Thankful. At Inveraray head right (North) and then turn right to Dalmally and keep going to Crianlarich from there you can either do the route as shown on the ERC web-site or head back to Edinburgh via Lochearnhead, Callander Stirling.

Route 3
Another long and hilly route that comes to mind is the Dave Harris Memorial 200k Audax. Starts in Roslyn, it takes in Tala (straight up n' steep) for starters and then (I think) Tushielaw (hair pins and a long winding climb) and another climb which I've forgotten the name of right now but it's heading south from St Mary's Loch (I think). I don't have the route details here at work but I shall pass them on hopefully tonight.

Route 4
Final one that comes to mind but is tad epic is..... Edinburgh, Forth Bridge through Fife via Auchtermuchty (or Muchty as the locals call it) to ride beside the Tay. There is a nasty wee climb which I will have to check up where it is exactly and how to avoid going through Dundee. Skirt Dundee heading North to Pitlochry then South/West to Aberfeldy turn right to go up Glen Lyon (note some interesting cottages at Fortingall and there is a nice waterfall a mile or two after).
Glen Lyon is deceptive it seems to be flat but isn't and usually you have a head wind to contend with. The last time I rode it with two other blokes taking turns working on the front it took us nearly an hour to do 10 miles up the Glen! There is a tea shop / Post Office where you can get some cake etc as you approach the dam.

Depending on the map you are using it may say that there isn't a road for this next bit! You pass under the dam and then start to climb up the side of the Glen, note the nice "Signpost of Doom" that says if you continue no one will come and rescue you if you get in trouble. Your on a bike so it doesn't apply to you :-) The last time I rode it was on the last day of May and it was snowing at the top in fact the snow was either hitting me horizontally or coming up the hill into my face, a great place to have a punture! It is a very potholed road so take it easy on the descent (riding 700x23s wasn't the best idea!) By the bottom of the hill I was struggling to work the brakes as my hands were so cold. Drop down to Killin you can then head home via Lochearnhead or Creiff. The road out of Creiff is a tougher climb but is a shorter route home.

Matt Churchill

2007-03-17T04:45:00.001Z

If you get a chance to see Matt play live then go! If all else fails buy his new CD here

Sleeping at the Trike...

2007-02-09T14:38:00.001Z

Warning long waffling story ahead........

I used to ride a converted bike as a . I had enjoyed my first year on it but sadly as it was an old frame with possibly quite extensive rust inside the frame the seat tube snapped just above the bottom bracket. So I ordered that winter a handmade frame from Charlie Ralph (Alves Framesets) who is well known for a laid back approach to deadlines.

Now my intention was to do the Scottish B.A.R. in the new year. Obviously I checked with Charlie that he would be able have the frame ready for May at the latest. May and June came and went and still no frame. I was starting to run out of 100s to ride so after some worried phone calls Charlie agreed he would have it ready for the Scottish National 100 based on a course near Dingwall.

We agreed that I would come up on Saturday before the race to fit the groupset, bars and wheels basically build the thing and then we would head to Dingwall to stay at a BB handily located very near to the sign on. Of course when I arrived on the Saturday the frame wasn't ready. Braze ons, facing the headset and bottom bracket and making a fore runner of the STi brake to allow two sets canti brakes to be fitted to the forks with one mounted to the front and the set mounted on the rear of the forks and finally shot blast and apply primer and undercoat all still to do!

Needless to say we didn't finish the trike till about three in the morning. Charlie drove me up to Dingwall as by this time the wife n' kids had long gone. Charlie's Volvo had seen better days but more to the point it hadn't seen 60 mph in a very long time let alone 50mph. So with the sunrise fairly well under way I arrived at the BB but could find no way in so had to try and get a snooze in the back of the car having extracted a couple of child seats and the like. Didn't particlarly get any sleep what with the worry of sleeping in and missing the race start. To top it all I didn't get any breakfast and had to make do with a bannana.

Sleepy and frazzled I started the race. The first 50 miles were ok but as usual when I did a 100 mile TT I had gone off to fast and combined with the exceptional warm weather that day the last 50 miles were gruelling. I had to resort to asking a member of one of the fast boys support crew if they had any liquid to spare, he very kindly handed me up a bottle.

As I rode the last 10 miles I was struggling to stay awake what with the aero bars making for a comfortable sleeping position. Falling asleep and still pedalling was fine as the trike tended to want to just go in a straight line, trouble was being a typical little B road it wasn't straight! I kept waking up and finding myself heading for a hedge on either the wrong or correct side of the road.

I did manage to finish and it was the worst time I ever did for a 100 (5 hours 10 mins. I think it was) but the funny thing was that the support crew that kindly handed me up a bottle were trying to motivate there man Stuart Whittley to catch and pass me by yelling at him that the guy on the trike was beating him. Years later I met Stuart socially at a "drinking club with a running problem" that I had just joined and we were swapping tales from our time trialling past when we discovered it was Stuart that was chasing me and to his chagrin had never caught me but to rub salt into the wound he didn't know was that I was asleep as well!

Btw
Those of you who are fans of Roy Harper may note a resemblance to one of Roy's songs with the title of this post.

New Liquid Animation Algorithms

2007-02-01T00:25:00.000Z

Very realistic looking animation of fluids and smoke have been developed at CalTech

Check it out here

Reply to First Believer

2007-01-24T03:57:00.000Z

I tried to post a comment on Andy's Blog about becoming his "First Believer" I failed to get it to work as I suspect what I had written was to long, so I've posted my reply here.

What can I say from all the songs I listened to on the Splinters II page yours stood out. Graeme Dutton's I also liked but yours was for me clearly the best.

The other thing about your choice of subject is that by conincidence as a kid I did a project about the "Condor Legion". I was fascinated with World War II aircraft not so much the history but just the machines. I was obsessed with making models of planes and used to spend all my newspaper round money on Modelworld magazine and Tamiya and Revell model kits. I would drive my Mum daft with the mess from enamel paint on my clothes the carpet and furniture etc.

As I progressed through school and particularly studying History which I enjoyed a lot (still do in fact) and I was also lucky in having two excellent History teachers who were in my eyes were really "cool". I had to study the period leading up to The Great War as well as the period leading up to the World War II. As part of this study we had to each do a "project" that we could choose the subject of, as long as it related to the period before World War II.

I chose to detail all the planes used by the "Condor Legion". This was mostly because a) Almark's Modelworld magazine had done a series of articles detailing all the aeroplane markings and b) by doing lots of drawings of planes I wouldn't have to write so many words (I suffered with dyslexia as a kid) and as a bonus I like drawing so it wasn't exactly hard to see why this was what I did. Sadly I don't think I ever got the project back from the teacher or if I did I have no idea what happened to it.

Now at this time I was thirteen or fourteen and like most kids at that age you think you are invincible and will live forever and that things like carpet bombing such as happened for the first time at Gernika just didn't impinge on my consciousness. About this time though I did become aware of the Holocaust and the horrendous sufferring caused by war as a result of watching Jeremy Issac's masterful The World at War. Through the harrowing images of Auschwitz, the suffering of both civilians and soldiers on the Western front, I came to realise albeit in a limited way the horror of war.

Hearing your take on the bombing of Gernika, awoke all these memories. So thank you Andy for stirring up my old grey cells, as well as making me take another look at the history of that period.

All the best and hopefully a few more folks will soon become "believers" to.